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Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe

So: me and bitcoin, you already knew I disliked it, right?

(Let's discriminate between Blockchain and Bitcoin for a moment. Blockchain: a cryptographically secured distributed database, useful for numerous purposes. Bitcoin: a particularly pernicious cryptocurrency implemented using blockchain.) What makes Bitcoin (hereafter BTC) pernicious in the first instance is the mining process, in combination with the hard upper limit on the number of BTC: it becomes increasingly computationally expensive over time. Per this article, Bitcoin mining is now consuming 30.23 TWh of electricity per year, or rather more electricity than Ireland; it's outrageously more energy-intensive than the Visa or Mastercard networks, all in the name of delivering a decentralized currency rather than one with individual choke-points. (Here's a semi-log plot of relative mining difficulty over time.) Credit card and banking settlement is vulnerable to government pressure, so it's no surprise that BTC is a libertarian shibboleth. (Per a demographic survey of BTC users compiled by a UCL researcher and no longer on the web, the typical BTC user in 2013 was a 32 year old male libertarian.)

Times change, and so, I think, do the people behind the ongoing BTC commodity bubble. (Which is still inflating because around 30% of BTC remain to be mined, so conditions of artificial scarcity and a commodity bubble coincide). Last night I tweeted an intemperate opinion—that's about all twitter is good for, plus the odd bon mot and cat jpeg—that we need to ban Bitcoin because it's fucking our carbon emissions. It's up to 0.12% of global energy consumption and rising rapidly: the implication is that it has the potential to outstrip more useful and productive computational uses of energy (like, oh, kitten jpegs) and to rival other major power-hogging industries without providing anything we actually need. And boy did I get some interesting random replies!

As viral tweets go, this one didn't get retweeted a whole lot—only about 200 times. (My all time record is over 5000 rts.) It attracted a lot of replies from folks who don't follow me and I've never heard of, all of them really contemptuous/insulting (as is often the case on twitter: thick skin recommended). Obviously, a lot of folks with BTC wallets are kind of attached to them and dislike the idea of losing them. What I wasn't expecting was the alt-right/neo-Nazi connection. Bitcoin isn't just popular among libertarians, it's popular among folks with green frog/Kek user icons and anti-semitic views. ("Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.)

One possible explanation, which looks quite reasonable as a first approximation, is that the US libertarian fringe has been assimilated by the neo-Nazis. After all, once you take one red pill, why not take another, and another, until you overdose on the bloody things? Alternatively, Bitcoin boosters are using the same twitter-based astroturf techniques as the alt-right to shout down anyone who publicly qustions or threatens their investment. But I didn't see the wave of obvious bots I'd have expected if the second explanation was correct: it looked to me far more like an angry human mob, with added political extremism on top.

Now, I'd like to remind you about an at-first-sight unrelated historical phenomenon: the collapse of the Papiermark in 1923 in the Weimar Republic, and the subsequent Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazis failed to take over at that time; the German economy was stabilized and the global economy in general wasn't as fragile as it would later become during the Great Depression. But the 1919-23 hyperinflation was a major driver for the initial rise of the Nazi party. Hitler's mass support wasn't motivated solely by his anti-semitism and revanchist imperialism: it was made all about the money supply. (In the 1929-33 period, mainstream politicians were discredited by the wave of mass unemployment triggered by withdrawal of US bank loans, and Brüning's policy of deflation. When nobody has any money to buy bread, and the bakers have no money to buy grain, but the bank mortgage on the bakery isn't getting any smaller, bad shit ensues.)

It's fairly clear now that since 2007/08 we're living in the dying days of the former neoliberal system. With disruption and collapse spreading throughout the developed world, the systematized recipe known as the Washington Consensus is being applied not only to client states but back home in the heartlands of the USA, UK, and EU members (where it's sold to the economically illiterate as "austerity"). It's also being used as cover for disaster capitalism, the systematic looting of public assets and social capital for the enrichment of small groups. Meanwhile, weaponized media (both social media and mass media owned by the oligarchs) is used to channel the sense of grievance felt by the immiserated population into acceptable directions, via slogans like "taking back control" or "make America Great again". Directions such as resentment towards immigrants, get-rich-quick schemes such as cryptocurrency bubbles or goldbuggery, and ritualized abusive denunciation of anyone who questions these attempts to divert attention away from the real problem—the way we're being conditioned for exploitation by our self-proclaimed masters.

So I now have two follow-on questions about BTC.

Firstly, what if BTC's supporters are right? That is: if BTC delivers what its supporters promise, then how will the oligarchs react? A working distributed cryptocurrency model is inimical to the interests of billionaire monopolists who want to get rich by imposing rent-seeking practices on the immobilized peasantry (ahem: I mean us ordinary folks). They won't go quietly, there will be a crack-down, and we may be seeing the first signs of the shape it will take in China (which is banning bitcoin excchanges). Distributed systems, contra received wisdom, can be banned: you just have to be sufficiently ruthless. (You criminalize possession, then enforce by imposing deep packet inspection at the network backbone level, apply criminal penalties for being caught selling goods or services in return for the currency, and make it impossible to run a legitimiate business taking BTC in payment.) If you can marginalize BTC so that it is only useful for child pornography, ransomware, and illegal narcotics, it's no longer a threat to the mainstream economy. So I see one possible outcome of cryptocurrencies threatening the existing banking system as being to hasten the shuttering of the open internet. (Not that the oligarchs have any great love for the open internet in the first place: we get rowdy and organize. They're a lot happier with it being a non-neutral channel for sedative YouTube videos and, er, kitten jpegs. Discussion fora, blogs, and activists not wanted on board.)

A second problem: if, as I think, BTC doesn't deliver, then the bubble will eventually burst. I called it a long time ago: and although BTC continues to follow an overall upward trend (there have been, ahem, fluctuations that would have ben recognized as a full-on collapse in any conventional currency) we're going to run out of new BTC to mine sooner or later. At that point, the incentive for mining (a process essential for reconciling the public ledgers) will disappear and the currency will ... will what? The people most heavily invested in it will do their best to patch it up and keep it going, because what BTC most resembles (to my eye, and that of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase) is a distributed Ponzi scheme. But when a Ponzi scheme blows out, it's the people at the bottom who lose.

The longer BTC persists, the worse the eventual blowout—and the more angry people there are going to be. Angry people who are currently being recruited and radicalized by neo-Nazis.

952 Comments

1:

Ye gods and little fishes! 0.12%? That's evil. I had never looked at it closely, so didn't know the Ponzi scheme and cost inflation issues, but will ask my expert contact about it. But, I agree, we can expect a rapid increase in Bitcoin when (say) the UK economy comes apart and the new government attempts to do something about it, with consequences you may be able to imagine but I can't.

2:

I would be rubbing my eyes and suggesting taking the figures with a pinch of salt, were it not for the very real problem of bitcoin mining software in javascript being served up by web advertising exchanges — see coinhive for an entire business based on this crapware. (The idea is that it's more profitable to leech a victim's electricity to mine bitcoins than it is to show them adverts.)

And that's without getting into the growing problem of bitcoin miners embedded in malware (to make money for the bad guys).

3:

At that point, the incentive for mining (a process essential for reconciling the public ledgers) will disappear and the currency will ... will what?

From my outsiders understanding, this isn't really a problem, as there are two mechanisms countering the end of mining rewards: transaction fees (already necessary today to have reasonably fast transaction times) on one hand and a general drop-off of miners as mining becomes un-profitable.

4:

At which point, you start wondering about parasitic load: if some malware is sufficiently restrained not to bring its host to a halt, it's more likely to escape detection.

5:

And then you get the spam:

support 9/11/17 (Launching) Bitcoin Code support 14/11/17 Brand New Software - Generates $2,589 a Day! Bitcoin Code 14/11/17 Your Bitcoin Code beta tester account has been activated -- Bitcoin Code 18/11/17 Your Bitcoin Code beta tester account has been activated -- support Thursday Congratulations! You Qualified -- (email address redacted) support Thursday Congrats! You're IN -- (email address redacted)

Fortunately a few choice words in a couple of filter rules and they are never seen again.

6:

I think if it becomes more profitable to infest someone's machine with bitcoin mining code than sell them ads then it will be interesting to see what Google &co do: their business model currently revolves around selling adverts to peopl, so do they change (is this 'pivoting'? I forget) to foisting malware on their users, or do they help to kill bitcoin?

Related to this: these companies have very large farms of machines, which are not completely utilised I assume. If bitcoin mining is more profitable than its electricity cost then they should (and I assume are) set up low-priority tasks to mine bitcoin on those farms and run their systems at whatever their capacity limit is (heat dissipation I suppose) all the time.

As a climate-science person, all of this smells just terrible.

7:
if BTC delivers what its supporters promise, then how will the oligarchs react?

I was listening to the news this morning and I thought the characterisation of Bitcoin as an "unregulated financial product" by one of the business folk is a nice indicator for how they'll manage it.

Regulation.

It's up to 0.12% of global energy consumption and rising rapidly

I somewhat sarcastically tweeted earlier today that Nick Bostrom's Paperclip Maximiser makes more sense if you replace "Paperclip" with "Bitcoin".

8:

Given the high proportion of far-right views among self-proclaimed libertarians and the anti-bank philosophy behind Bitcoin, I'm not surprised that Bitcoin is catnip to anti-semites (who, after all, are sure that Jews run every financial institution on Earth).

I'm not sure you need any theory about infiltration or conspiracy for this: the underlying memes are aligned enough to create a strong correlation.

9:

I noticed the arrival of the bitcoin spam about a month ago too.

Historically spam-mail about some topic seems to start once the smarter players conclude that the end-game has started and they need to offload their holdings to non-smart players before it is too late.

And yes, my first thought when I saw those spam-mails were: Pop-Corn!

10:

Bitcoin mining is now consuming 30.23 TWh of electricity per year

In WMD units, that's 26 megatons a year, one medium-yield B61 bomb per day.

11:

One possible explanation, which looks quite reasonable as a first approximation, is that the US libertarian fringe has been assimilated by the neo-Nazis. After all, once you take one red pill, why not take another, and another, until you overdose on the bloody things?

This is the case. There has been quite a bit of writing lately examining the "libertarian-to-Nazi pipeline", the Niskanen Center (a bunch of libertarians who saw the slide start with the Kochs and Cato and are growing alarmed by it) has been giving it a hard look for a while now. These, in series, do a good job laying it out

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/explaining-white-nationalisms-anti-statist-bedfellows/

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-democracy-skepticism-infected-american-right/

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-origins-libertarian-influence-ruling-american-right/

These 3 are the pretty critical ones but this

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/black-liberty-matters/

looks at the historical biases which shifts things a bit and here

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/defense-liberty-cant-without-identity-politics/

It goes into a bit more that "black lives should matter as much as tax rates so why don't they to libertarians?"

Here they go into how libertarianism is shooting towards fascism because they only do a superficial consideration of their principles on markets and ignoring most of what Hayek said

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/the-shortcut-to-serfdom/

This one covers how trying to be "edgy" with their ideas feeds the fascism

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/public-choice-theory-politics-charity/

Here they go into how the embrace of climate denialism is very tied to fascism

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/climate-change-denial-historical-consciousness-trumpism-lessons-carl-schmitt/

Here about how their embrace of the republican line on nationalism is goostepping towards fascism

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/fuzzy-borders-benign-nationalism/

here they are more explicit about it

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/liberal-case-nationalist-immigration-restrictions/

And here even more so

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/individual-liberty-power-exclude/

With this one they try to point out to their fellow libertarians that they aren't willing to fight this and "what the HELL man!"

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/revitalizing-liberalism-age-brexit-trump/

And here they talk how the idea of being a libertarian is becoming toxic because of all this and they may need to shift

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/moderation-ii-rules-moderates/

Additionally, while I haven't completed it yet, the second edition of The Reactionary Mind https://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Donald/dp/0190692006/

Deals a lot with how the libertarian style worship of markets and business ties in with the same reactionary impulses we see in neoconservatism and its take on military prowess and how both are tied with domination.

So yeah, libertarians getting fed into the alt right/Nazi hopper is totally a thing now. Question is if Charlottesville was enough to break those guys before they got going. Given how the New York Times is boosting Nazis, probably not

12:

How do transaction fees work? I mean, I always use them against anybody claiming the old "Bitcoin is free to use" bit, which it isn't, because electricity, but also because transaction fees is a field in a Bitcoin transaction and right now might not be necessary but once all BTC are generated it will.

But what I mean by how do they work… if I'm a miner code, can I only generate a block with pending transactions that have a transaction fee? Or is a block required to include all pending transactions in the network? If the first, then transaction fees are bound to go up, to at least enough to cover electricity costs. If the second, how do they propose to solve the freeloader problem?

13:

Thinking about this while digging the garden, I wonder if the Great Powers are beginning to think of bitcoin as a threat (as you say above), and are thinking of mounting a covert attack. I don't know about about blockchain or it to be able to spot vulnerabilities, but there assuredly will be to be some - note that I am NOT talking about the trivial attacks that are so common, but an out-of-context attack on the entire mechanism. And there at least two combinations among the usual culprits who probably have the skills and resources to mount such attack: USA / Israel / UK? and Russia / Serbia. I doubt that North Korea has either, and I doubt that China, Japan etc. would, even if they could. As you describe, China is not subtle when it comes to this sort of thing.

14:

Some people more knowledgeable on the topic than me tell me that CPU mining of bitcoins is dead. Specialized ASICs are so much efficient there that the probability (it's a competitive probabilistic process) to find a bitcoin when you're on CPU is effectively zero. As a result, there's no web-based distributed bitcoin mining process at scale in the wild.

That's not true of the other coins out there though. And the events on ethereum are just... beautiful.

OG.

15:

That word "libertarian" has ground my gears ever since people started freely chucking it about, because it looks as if it ought to relate to things like liberty and liberalism, but when trying to deduce its meaning from contexts of its use and the kind of views it seems to describe, the answer I come up with has always been "fascist". So I've been resolving the cognitive dissonance by simply mentally doing s/libertarian/fascist/g for a long time now.

16:

As a miner you pick which transactions you want to include in your block. You can if you want to include ones that have no / very small transaction fees, but generally you pick the transactions that have highest fee per byte (so that you get the most you can for your full block, which is limited by size).

As for the article: it's sad to see you call people Nazis in such broad strokes. Yes, BTC is still unproven; yes, it'll likely have to go through significant modifications to become efficient enough (lightning network comes to mind).

I'd expect the impact of malware / javascript mining on energy consumption to be minimal - those pcs are running anyway. I guess a busy cpu might be working on higher voltage than when semi-idling? But I wouldn't expect this to significantly impact long-term consumption.

Electiricity consumption of dedicated mining will stabilise at the point of profitability; the cost here is directly sent to the users of BTC, and if the users become unwilling to pay that price some miners go bankrupt, hashpower / difficulty level drops, and less electricity is used. If the final level of consumption is within an order of magnitude of current, but the idea of BTC as a global payment network succeeds, then that would be definitely worth it. The internet currently uses significantly more power than BTC; but we're willing to pay for that.

17:

the US libertarian fringe has been assimilated by the neo-Nazis. Yes, well - see: Fascism increasing in US - but they can't "see" it.

18:

where it's sold to the economically illiterate as "austerity" Lest we forget, "austerity" was invented (in the UK) by a very deeply unpleasant christian socialist ploiticain called Stafford Cripps. It was, justifyably well-hated & was largely responsible for Labour losing the two elections in 1950-51. But Cripps pushed austerity as a "good thing" - christian hair-shirtism enforced on an unwilling public who didn't actually NEED little luxuries like unrationed bread ... The turnabout is extremely delicious in a cynical sort of way, but you are correct - it was bollocks then & it's bollocks, now, too.

19:
I'd expect the impact of malware / javascript mining on energy consumption to be minimal - those pcs are running anyway. I guess a busy cpu might be working on higher voltage than when semi-idling? But I wouldn't expect this to significantly impact long-term consumption.

Anecdotal, I know, but I have an issue when sometimes when my laptop comes out of suspension the Browser process in Chrome starts using 100% CPU. This is always tied to a specific tab, but since it's the Browser process that shows the symptoms and I sometimes have too many tabs open, sometimes I won't even attempt to fix it if I'm going to be using the computer for only a short time. Anyway, when this happens, load average shoots over 1.5 when idle, and of course the CPU fan turns on. Under this condition my laptop's battery lasts half as long as normal, or worse.

So yes, if I have malware running that makes my CPU busy it means I'm paying for the electricity for it to run. It's not free.

20:

"Libertarian" politics is an American thing, and it leverages the American folk-understanding of "Liberty", which has always had a nasty undernote of "liberty to own slaves".

21:
But what I mean by how do they work… if I'm a miner code, can I only generate a block with pending transactions that have a transaction fee?

As a miner, you can generate whatever block using whatever subset of pending transaction you want. Since the number of transactions per mn has hit the block limit (and all attempts at extending it have failed, including forking the blockchain), all miners have done that: they process the transaction with the highest fee first. Your no-fee transaction gets bumped until there's a lull in transaction activity.

Assuming the blockchain does not burst, at one point, BTC will no longer be viable as "money", since the fee competition means it is only useful for large amounts (that is, going around currency exchange controls).

22:

it's sad to see you call people Nazis in such broad strokes

You didn't see all the kek/alt-right/((())) shitheads springing to the defense of BTC in my twitter feed last night.

Seriously, I didn't see it coming (until it showed up).

It need not be the case that all BTC users are neo-nazis, for it to be the case that neo-nazis have a hard-on for BTC.

23:

I thought the alt-right--libertarian connection was that the alt-right has a large number of former libertarians who suddenly realized that in Libertopia the "wrong" people could not be kept out.

Besides, usually when someone asks if I'm a Jew, it's in response to something libertarian, and not always about border-control. One one occasion, it was in response to a defense of strip mining.

24:

it's sad to see you call people Nazis in such broad strokes.

they want to create a militaristic homogeneous ethnostate that privileges white people, and while they will generally elide exactly how they will get rid of all those they deem undesirable, are very open to "joking" about concentration camps, gas chambers, and genocide. Their rhetoric is aggressively anti-Semitic (see chanting "Jews will not replace us" at Charlottesville), they are fond of nazi tropes and styles (again, see the torch march at Charlottesville), and much of their chose imagery intentionally invokes Nazi imagery (the "Kekistan" flag is a very slightly modified version of the German Nazi war flag).

Oh, and they are big on swastikas and outright saying they are Nazis.

If the jackboot fits, wear it.

25:

There was an article on Slashdot yesterday: 17-23% of all bitcoins are lost, based on studying the blockchain.

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/11/27/1517255/nearly-4-million-bitcoins-lost-forever-new-study-says

That's a lot of virtual coins.

26:

Of course, no historical precedents exist. The Spanish economy in the seventeenth century didn't collapse with any relationship whatsoever to its continued mercantilism and dependence upon importation of new currency from the New World (and how about those collateral consequences, eh?) instead of localized efficiency, devolution of inefficient oligarchies, and/or actual implementation of a working local economy.

Nope, nothing to see here. Not even regarding the rest of Europe at the time. What's that old chestnut about being doomed to repeat the past that we don't understand?

27:

Interesting, especially the distribution of from whom they are lost. One wonders whether they really are all lost, or there is some extremely subtle fraud, money laundering or whatever going on. A healthy share of 10-20 billion is enough to get some serious attention from the major organised crime groups.

28:

BitCoin is a bit of a puzzler and every time I come across any serious discussion of it it makes me starting thinking about what "money" is.

I tend to view that BitCoin is a Ponzi scheme.

However, if it turns out to be successful as a currency, I mean generally used as a means of exchange for a significant portion of world trade then things get a interesting. I think the first effect is deflationary; a transfer of wealth to those holding BitCoin from those holding other assets (including their own labour). Then I think followed by a period of inflation as everyone tries to set up their own BitCoin. Which is akin to forgery or perhaps seigniorage.

Which makes me wonder why you would use BitCoin or similar as a means of exchange when it doesn't have a practical monopoly on being the means of exchange in a geographically defined area with unified regulatory bodies who have a monopoly of sanctioned violence.

29:

Thanks for that link. Given how much effort conservatives have put into breaking the system, it's more than a bit disturbing.

30:

Now THAT ( "liberty to won slaves" ) also has a very nasty historical echo. Cato & Cicero etc in the late Roman Republic always went on about "Liberty" - but not for the proles, of course. It got them, in the end, two very bloody civil wars & the Principate - which we call the Roman Imperium. Historical paralells? What are they?

31:
And there at least two combinations among the usual culprits who probably have the skills and resources to mount such attack

It's not that hard.

32:

It CANNOT BE USED AS A CURRENCY - for the exct same reason that Gold can't be (any more) ... There isn't enough of it to go around. Of course, the BTC-pushers view this as a feture, not a bug ... & ties in to some extremely "stange" opinions that seem, certainly borderline fascist.

33:

Bugger "Liberty to OWN slaves"

34:

they literally have a sub called /r/physicalremoval that is used to discuss genocide/ethnic cleansing.

Or go check out the comments in /r/The_Donald

Fuck off with the "I don't see any Nazis here" bullshit. "A few hours searching" is a crock of shit, they have open subreddits that they boost to the front page dedicated to it.

Is "neo-nazism" and "white supremacy" really systemic, as the article suggests? It's not clear to me. I'm still waiting for the evidence.

Try reading a fucking history book.

35:

Interesting. Thanks. The analyses are a bit naive, because there are reasons an attacker might want to crash bitcoin - either because it is seen as a threat or because you can make a lot of money out of a crash. It also makes me wonder how many of those lost coins were lost, and how many spirited away for some nefarious purpose - you don't need more than very brief control to achieve that sort of result - probably very few, if any, but ....

36:

[ DELETED for violating moderation policy. Sock puppet commenter banned. ]

37:

"It isn't real because I haven't seen it." "it isn't real because you haven't done the research" "It might be real but what about these guys over here" "It might be real but here's some anti-establishment links that allude to my point" "Needs more evidence"

Anyone else playing troll bullshit bingo? I think I have a finished line.

38:

Nazi astroturfer/apologist unpublished and banned. Sorry for the attention sink.

39:

I had virtually the full card.

40:

Moderation note:

If you are new to this blog and feel like commenting, read the moderation policy first.

This blog has a zero-fucks-given approach to deleting comments by alt-right apologists and banning their asses, so you might as well piss off now rather than wasting your energy posting here.

Hint: my family tree was drastically truncated between 1939 and 1945. I grew up attending a synagogue with concentration camp survivors who had the numbers tattooed on their wrists. Nazis can fucking die for all I care.

41:

It was such an epic whine that I'll actually consider reposting it, with point-by-point rebuttal ... once we're a couple of hundred comments further in so that it doesn't give aid and comfort to the cuckscreechers.

(Neologism time: "cuckscreecher" = "someone who screeches 'cuck!!!' at their enemies; a neo-nazi".)

42:

"Libertarian" politics is an American thing, and it leverages the American folk-understanding of "Liberty", which has always had a nasty undernote of "liberty to own slaves".

One problem with Libertarian "thought" is that all the Libertarians believe they're going to be John Galt once the government stops oppressing them. They can't comprehend not being among the elite. The real world in NOT Lake Wobegon and they can't all be above average ... but the fallacy persists.

Their politics are designed to maximize profits for private sector oligarchs (with whom they include themselves) while pushing costs off to the Untermenschen.

There really wasn't that much difference between Libertarianism and Fascism in the first place.

43:

Oh, it's gone. Well the devil needed a better advocate anyway.

44:

"One problem with Libertarian 'thought' is that all the Libertarians believe they're going to be John Galt once the government stops oppressing them."

Actually no. My hope is that there will be enough "captains of industry" around to compete with each other and prevent monopolies.

45:

Re. Ponzi schemes: What you said. There's a reason why all major currencies are state-regulated and peer-pressured into a semblance of civilized behavior by the international community—and it's not just to enrich the 1% and keep tax lawyers gainfully employed.

Re. exponentially growing energy consumption by BTC mining: Fe Ah, the (gravitational) singularity! When the BTC energy-consumption curve goes vertical, there will be no energy left to power Internet of Things appliances. As these devices cool, they will shrink (because the average kinetic energy of their atoms decreases, causing a volume decrease). Because the rate of increase in BTC energy consumption goes vertical at the singularity, the rate of energy withdrawal from IOT devices becomes infinite, as does the rate of cooling. The resulting contraction is sufficiently fast that it surpasses the ability of atoms to withstand the contraction forces. Micro-fusion (massive releases of small amounts of energy) ensues, in a process that competes with the even-faster creation of micro-black holes. The micro-black holes quickly begin to merge, creating macro-black holes that merge with their kin to create even larger black holes. Then, as in the suddenly prophetic Simpson's black hole episode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_XXIII), the world is consumed, leaving nothing but a dully glowing object in orbit around our sun to warn alien civilisations. Conveniently, this also explains the Fermi paradox. If we looked for a large population of planetary-sized black holes instead of radio waves, we'd find all the missing civilizations!/Fe

Well, it could happen! Alt-physics!

46:

I noticed that the London Evening Standard (possibly published by interests that are not sympathetic to Bitcoin, but I don't think it matters) had an article about this on their financial pages last night, suggesting that the bubble is likely to bust and there might be better investments out there:

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/bitcoin-bubble-fear-as-frenzy-pushes-price-near-to-10000-a3702646.html

I'm staying well clear - I don't trust it or understand how it ever got to be any more "real" than the guys who play online RPGs to win magic items etc. and sell them to the other players, and sooner or later I suspect that someone with a quantum computer or some other technological boost will corner the market and get VERY rich just before the bubble bursts.

48:

Re that, Quantum computers also (will) pose some (other) potential issues that could turn Bitcoins from a gold-analogue (with a small and easily mined amount of gold in the reachable universe) to a lead-analogue. (I didn't search hard for critiques of these papers, though.) Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them (28 Oct 2017) and very slightly later (authors cite first paper, say it covers same ground and was written at same time.) Bitcoin and quantum computing (12 Nov 2017) They both identify the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) as a potential medium term weakness. From the second paper (after dismissing some simpler attacks on bitcoin via ECDSA attacks), Another possibility is that once a public key is revealed in a pending transaction, a malicious actor, Eve, with a quantum computer could steal the bitcoins before the transaction is finalized. In principal Eve only has 10 minutes to find the private key before the transaction is finalized. In practice bitcoin transactions often sit in an unofficial pending pool (the “ mem - pool ” ) for an hour or more. For 256 bit ECDSA about 1500 qubits are required and 610*9 one-qubit additions are needed. Each one-qubit addition takes 9 quantum gates. Thus to execute this type of attack within an hour the quantum computer needs to perform gate operations speed of around 660 MHz . The demands on the number of qubits and speed may make this challenging, at least in the near term.

49:

I still don't get bitcoin.

Anything which is produced in a fixed quantity by design is a collectible, not a currency. Bitcoins are like the coins struck for coin collectors, or Ming vases, or Barbie Dolls in Original Packaging.

There is no intrinsic value in a collectible; its price is set by the "bigger fool" principle.

Money, on the other hand: money is created when loans are made, and destroyed when they are paid back.

So as far as I can tell what we have with Bitcoin is a classic Tulip Bubble.

What am I missing?

50:

You forgot the various "religious" - in the USSA, inevitably some form of really well-past-barking-mad "christians" claiming that it is "Gahd's work" or similar & who are you to deny the almighty ( almighty pile of shit that is ) This is happening right now in the senatorial by-election, IIRC.

51:

You specifically limit your complaint to bitcoin and not blockchain. But to me, it looks like the power consumption issue is probably inherent to blockchain. Am I wrong?

I've never dug deeply into the algorithms, but the usual high-level explanation of Blockchain's security is that the "miners" vote on what goes into the chain, and so you can't "steal" the chain and write whatever you want unless you control 51% of the mining power.

(The slightly-more-technical explanations usually make it sound less like voting and more like a lottery, which I think is rather frightening, but setting that aside...)

So let's suppose we are using blockchain to protect some asset with value V, and that a malicious actor who controls 51% of the mining power can effectively steal that asset and extract its full value (V) for themselves. If you can buy 51% of the mining power for less than V, then it is economically rational for someone to do so--they'll instantly make a profit.

That means that the blockchain is only secure as long as it is continuously defended by computational assets worth at least V--otherwise, someone could overpower the defenders and seize the asset for a cost lower than the asset's value.

That means your defense costs more than the value of the asset you are defending. At which point, it is economically rational to just let the asset get stolen rather than try to protect it.

Now, yes, real life is much dirtier than that. Theft is usually negative-sum: the value of the asset to an attacker is probably less than its value to the defenders, which hypothetically creates a window where it might be worth defending the asset.

On the other hand, all the computers the attacker bought in order to temporarily overpower the defense don't disappear in a puff of smoke after the attack; they can resell them or use them for other purposes. Which means the NET cost of the attack is probably much lower than the up-front cost. That pushes things in the opposite direction. (This doesn't help the defenders as much, because they need to defend the asset as long as it exists; the attacker only needs the computational power for as long as it takes to loot the asset.)

And if miners are effectively anonymous, it's not clear an attacker will suffer any real reputational costs. (Though it depends on the asset being defended and how the attacker would want to use it.)

Is there some reason I'm missing why the security properties of blockchain are not economically insane?

52:

Nothing See my post @ # 32

53:

Hmmm.

I remember back a few years ago (Google says 2013-2014) that Goldman Sachs was playing around with manipulating the aluminum market through mass storage.

The reason I bring that up is that government-backed fiat money only works if there's a government to back the fiat. Blockchains and cryptocurrencies appear to go around that, so (if you're libertarian minded) that's one less function you need a government for. Money without governments is a good thing, if you're a libertarian.

Now these two don't look like they blend with each other, but I suspect they do. The connection is the future:

--I suspect that the rich (who by culture if not genetics are effectively think they want to own the rest of us) see the future as having a lot less people in it, and rather than give up their power, they are trying to claim ownership of stuff people need (power, water, food, materials, access to information, etc.), including the use of force to protect their ownership. That, I suspect, is where the real action is right now, but it's disguised because it can be broken right now.

--The rest of us rubes think money is important. We're not buying farmland where it rains for when civilization collapses, or hoarding bullets and distilling equipment to take or make money. Rather, we're utterly dependent on being able to buy stuff, and therefore we try to maintain distribution chains into cities, because that seems more sensible than getting ready to kill off the competition so that you can be the cock crowing atop the dunghill after the shit hits. For us, blockchains look really useful, because they're a way to help cut through all the capitalist deception and BS we routinely put up with.

--Cryptocurrencies look nice for two reasons in this scenario. One is that they allow claims of ownership that don't necessarily depend on government fiat. Secondly, they're currently blowing a nice bubble, allowing the clever manipulators to profit and buy more resources while impoverishing the so-clever cool-spotters who jumped on latter and don't realize what trouble they're in. Since those so-clever people are the ones who would cause the property owners trouble later on, impoverishing them might be smart. Therefore, blowing bubbles with cryptocurrencies seems to be a good strategy right now.

As for blockchains, I'm hoping they don't end up as the social media of the 2020s, yet another necessary part of our infrastructure, but controlled by a few really wealthy companies who franchise out mining and such. I suspect that's where they will go, until things get worse. But if mining takes so much energy, blockchains have a limited lifespan.

54:

I wasn't aware that mining BitCoin was getting so ridiculously energy intensive. I should have been, because I've seen schemes like this popping up this fall (tl;dr: hook a solar farm to a processor farm to mine for bitcoin).

Serious question for people who actually know about blockchains:

How useful are blockchains that are NOT so energy-intensive as Bitcoin to mine?

I'm thinking about how useful blockchain technology might be for, say, ethereum-style contract validation and such in developing parts of the world, such as, perhaps the Rust Belt or central Africa. Some of these countries have jumped a lot of first world development costs by, say, jumping straight to cell phones and skipping landlines. Are blockchains equally revolutionary, or are they so computation/energy-intensive that they'll always, ultimately, be creatures of the wealthy and powerful?

55:

Any discussion of bitcoin tends to devolve into technical aspects, which are less interesting than the social ones (i.e. that it's obviously a ponzi scheme).

However, given that we're talking about it and not everyone here is a computer scientist who reads bitcoin papers for the laughs, here's a very brief low-tech rundown of what bitcoin is and how it works:

Bitcoin is theoretically a distributed peer-to-peer network implementing what amounts to a public bank ledger. The rows in the ledger are transactions, like "Publisher gave Charlie £100" and they go back to the beginning of time. Thus, each participant in the network needs to maintain a database of every bitcoin and bitcoin transaction in history. In practice, this means that it isn't really a P2P network, but rather a bizarre semblance of a P2P network maintained by a small number of powerful network operators.

To make sure that just anyone can't decide to give your money to Charlie (or more accurately, to enforce a "no backsies" rule), the ledger is decided via a voting scheme called "mining." Each miner is given a number of votes based on how much money they're willing to buy (or steal), and dump into a bonfire of Libertarian excess. In return, they're given bitcoins either from nowhere, or in transaction fees.

Like other distributed voting algorithms, this is thought to be secure as long as there are no bugs (surely you jest) and nobody buys 51% of the votes at any point. At the present time, something like 80% of the votes are owned by billionaires in China running the software on custom ASIC server farms.

Because Libertarians love deflationary currency, the software is designed to limit the total number of bitcoins in existence. However, this has little to do with the market price of bitcoin, which is what people actually care about. To actually buy bitcoin, you send real money to a broker ("Exchange") which pockets your money and issues buy orders on your behalf, much like a stock broker.

Given that thousands of people have been frantically mortgaging their houses to buy bitcoin, which they see as more valuable than investments (or in some cases, more valuable than food or shelter for their children), the price is understandably trending up rather than down. This has nothing at all to do with bitcoin's function as a currency for trade, which is becoming more and more irrelevant.

Finally, given that in reality bitcoin doesn't really work as a transaction processing network, hardly anyone really transfers bitcoin directly. The way it really works is that people keep bitcoin "wallets" on a small number of online services, vaguely resembling banks. These services transfer bitcoin between each other (and to "exchanges") periodically in large transactions, making bitcoin functionally resemble more of an inter-bank settlement service.

56:

Digital contracts are less useful than they sound, since they can only examine and modify stuff on the same blockchain, not in the real world.

For instance, if we want to have a contract where I'll pay you some cryptocurrency if you deliver me some bananas, the digital contract doesn't have any magical way to tell whether the bananas have been delivered, or to force you to deliver them. You'd need to have some trusted third party "tell" the contract whether the bananas were delivered or not, and the contract would have to take their word for it.

But if you have a trusted third party, you could probably just use them as an escrow agent and dispense with the digital contract.

For most applications, it's not clear that this provides any advantage over a traditional paper contract. (Even ignoring the energy/infrastructure costs and all the new possible points of failure.)

57:

Bitcoin mining is now consuming 30.23 TWh of electricity per year

In WMD units, that's 26 megatons a year, one medium-yield B61 bomb per day.

I overlooked the "of electricity" part there. Assuming that the electricity is mostly generated from heat engines using various sources of heat, the heat-to-electricity power ratio is around 3, so ~75 megatons per year, a mid-range B61 every 8 hours.

58:

So basically, blockchains are most useful as evidence chains, of the type, "X said Y at spacetime Z"? That's still useful for catching falsehoods. They would demonstrate what the contract was, but couldn't automatically enforce it.

The only place that a blockchain e-contract might be useful is where the statement Y was in itself the product being moved, I guess. A unique hash of the statement that "X shipped critical data Y to A at spacetime Z," followed by a hash of "A acknowledged receipt of Y to sender A at spacetime Z'" would constitute evidence of a contract and its fulfillment. No bananas here, but an ebook about banana-culturing might be part of such a contract. Is this correct?

59:

I wondered what economist Bernard Lietaer who wrote “The Future of Money” had to say about BTC and found a YouTube posting from April 2014. Lietaer calls BTC a “faux flac” or essentially a fake currency that is,

“focusing on two features of conventional money which happens to be negative for society in general … the fact that it is a speculation tool and not really a medium of exchange.”

However, Lietaer is interested in the BTC architecture (blockchain).

Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IQiBADQzXo

60:

Blockchains are an excellent solution to a very specific set of problems and 99% of the people talking about them would do better to implement a less data-and-energy intensive process.

For Example: There was recently some terrible bit of news of a Silicon Valley company that wanted to rate and tip waiters with a blockchain that would follow them from job to job, which was hideous, but also completely unecessary; why not run it on the company servers? In theory it means that if/when the company folds you can still have a tip/rate information stuck to people, but then that makes your company redundant which is bad capitalism. And if the blockchain requires the company to verify it, then there are cheaper and simpler ways than a blockchain.

61:

It might make sense to put bitcoin miner rigs in the basements of apartment blocks[1] and use the spent electricity to heat people's homes. Instead they're located up mountains in China next to cheap hydro power plants and the waste heat is dumped into the river water so the ASIC miner hardware can be overclocked.

[1]At least one French company has suggested doing this with a number of general-purpose cloud servers. The apartment block gets a fast fibre connection which the tenants can leech a few GB/s off for their own purposes and the 30kW of heat-death-of-the-Universe from a dozen servers turning and burning in the basement keeps everyone toasty.

62:

Nathaniel Popper, author of "Digital Gold" talks about BTC server farms in Mongolia, Tibet, and Iceland, in an interview with Terry Gross, host of FRESH AIR on npr:

“Anywhere where you can get cheap electricity to run computers very fast, people have set up basically server farms, big, you know, buildings just filled with computers trying to sort of unlock these new bitcoins but also sort of serving as the backbone of this network.”

“I went a couple years ago to one in China. They have gotten a lot bigger and more sophisticated since then. I mean, there are literally sort of towns that are built around this in China where you have people just living in the bitcoin mining facility, you know, Chinese people who really - you know, the people who are working there are sort of the custodians. They - most of them have no idea really what's going on or how the system works. But it's - you know, it's created this whole economy.”

Here’s the entire interview: https://www.npr.org/2017/11/09/563050434/once-an-underground-currency-bitcoin-emerges-as-a-new-way-to-track-information

63:

For Example: There was recently some terrible bit of news of a Silicon Valley company that wanted to rate and tip waiters with a blockchain that would follow them from job to job, which was hideous, but also completely unecessary

Right now blockchains, bitcoins, and even weirder things called "Initial Coin Offerings" are generating buzz and people are willing to throw money at them. I could easily believe that the company in question had never intended to use blockchains, but did a hasty rewrite because otherwise nobody would pay attention to them.

I can just aboud understand bitcoin and blockchains after a good explanation, but it tends to fade after a couple of days. But Initial Coin Offerings?Is there really anything there other than taking money from suckers and stashing it?

64:

Is there really anything there other than taking money from suckers and stashing it?

Yes. There are the political consequences of Wall Street taking the big dump under Trump, if in fact it happens. Unfortunately, knowing a bubble is getting blown is not the same thing as knowing when it will pop, as I learned back in 2002 (when I could see that there was a housing bubble, but thought it would pop in a few years, not in 2008).

One awkward consequence that could happen is if the US Republicans lose hard next year (perhaps with the Brexiteers?), Trump and Pence get impeached in 2019 (as the Brexiteers evaporate politically), and President Pelosi and PM Corbyn get to preside over the Great Bitcoin Bust.

65:

The primary purpose of every ICO is to enrich the issuer.

There may be secondary purposes, but I wouldn't (ahem) bet on them.

66:

I was wondering if blockchain technology could be a backbone for Strossian style interstellar economies.

It seems like it maybe could work. Thoughts?

The downside is that if you start such a novel now, it's likely to come out just as the whole bubble is bursting, and the timing might be, erm, unfortunate.

Still, could we blockchain a Martian colony, to help interplanetary economies somehow? Or is that just as stupid as it sounds?

67:

I haven't studied digital contracts in depth, but I don't immediately see a useful way to do what you're suggesting about verifying the shipment of digital goods.

You could probably have a contract along the lines of: "if someone pays me $5, I will let them download file X". But the customer wouldn't be able to verify that file X is actually the ebook they wanted until they got to see it. If they can't see it until after they pay, then the contract isn't really enforcing that they got the specific ebook that they wanted. (And if they can see it before paying, then by definition they already have a copy, and don't need to pay.)

You could publish a hash of the book publicly, but the customer still can't tell from the hash that the book you're offering is really the ebook about banana-culturing that they wanted. That only proves that you decided what you were going to sell at the time you made the hash, not that the thing you're selling conforms to any promises you made about it.

If you made a record that you gave me data X (or data that hashes to X), and I made a record that I received data X, then hypothetically either of us could prove after the fact that the data was transferred. But that only helps if both of us are honest at the time of the transaction; if you give me data X but I refuse to give you a receipt, then the public record probably doesn't help you.

You could ask a trusted third party to host the file and make a record when it is downloaded, but then you're back to an escrow agent.

If you want to use the blockchain strictly as a witness/notary that says "parties X and Y agreed to contract Z at time T", then yes, it can probably do that. (Subject to the usual limitations that "party X" really means "someone with access to X's private cryptographic key", and that this record is only as reliable as the witness (blockchain miner) that recorded it.)

68:

One problem with Libertarian "thought" is that all the Libertarians believe they're going to be John Galt once the government stops oppressing them. They can't comprehend not being among the elite.

Replace Libertarian and elite with Calvinist and elect and you get a similar vib from a different group. With a lot of overlap from what I can tell.

69:

Heteromeles wondered "...if blockchain technology could be a backbone for Strossian style interstellar economies."

Only if you assume the availability of ansibles. Without such a device, time delays due to the light-speed limitation would make it a bitch of a problem to keep the records consistent between solar systems. Do you really want to wait 4 years for the electronic funds transfer to arrive in your bank account?

Not to mention that anywhere records aren't instantly in synch, with near-zero latency, someone's going to find a way to profit (at someone else's expense) from the time lag before records are synched. In banking, it's called "the float". There's bound to be a blockchain equivalent.

Oh, wait: quantum-entangled bit(coin)s! I've achieved alt-physics twice in the same day! GDR

70:

time delays due to the light-speed limitation would make it a bitch of a problem to keep the records consistent between solar systems. Do you really want to wait 4 years for the electronic funds transfer to arrive in your bank account?

You haven't read "Neptune's Brood", have you? That's EXACTLY how slow money transactions work in that universe. They are not called "slow money" for nothing!

71:

the 30kW of heat-death-of-the-Universe from a dozen servers turning and burning in the basement keeps everyone toasty.

And for the summer?

72:

Agreed. I can see why libertarians might want this. Blockchains seem to be a way to create public records without having a government creating and curating them, so things like birth records, death certificates, and simple real estate transactions might be memorialized and publicized in a block chain. This would be most useful if the cost of verifying each transaction was set and didn't rise.

Of course, the converse problem (as pointed out by James Scott in Seeing Like A State) is that things like public records are there only tangentially to help the public. Mostly they're there so that the state knows who its citizens are, where they live, and what they own, so that they can be taxed.

However, people use bitcoin for criminal transactions all the time, so I suppose there is some exchange. It's not much different than trading tulip bulbs for tea, but there you have it.

73:

I've seen the argument that the price of bitcoin goes up because there's only a limited supply of bitcoin, so it's a good investment despite having no underlying value, just like the price of gold is much higher than the industrial use of gold would support. (I think this argument is largely nonsense, but I understand it at least.)

But the big hole in this always seemed to be that although there's a limited supply of bitcoin, there's no limit to the number of other bitcoin-alikes that could be invented. And over the last few months we seem to have an ever increasing supply of new bitcoin-alikes. Final frothing before the bubble burst that Charlie started with?

74:

ilya187 noted: "You haven't read "Neptune's Brood", have you? That's EXACTLY how slow money transactions work in that universe."

I have read it, but please note that the Saturn's/Neptune's universe is populated by essentially immortal androids/robots. They can afford to wait for slow money; most of us wetware types really can't. I assumed Heteromeles was referring to an economy for the benefit of us.

In principle, it would be no different from modern Internet protocols... with light-speed timelags of years. Imagine replacing the modern banking system with the pre-railway, pre-telegraph system of transferring money in the form of bank drafts carried from city to city on horseback, without ever knowing if the source bank was still in existence by the time (say) your New York draft arrived in San Francisco!

75:

Well, one might define money through its functions and its properties.

The primary function of money is to serve as a universal medium of exchange. The other are measure of value, standard of deferred payment, store of value

The main properties are: fungibility, durability, portability, cognizabilit, stability of value.

(this is pretty common knowledge of course, I just put it here as a reference point)

How much exactly Bitcoin satisfies this definition is disputable, but we can safely say that it satisfies significantly, qualitatively more then Ming Vases or Barbie Dolls. E.g. any sane clusterization of Bitcoin, fiat money, tulips, Ming Vases and Barbie Dolls on those functions/properties will put Bitcoin and fiat money to one set and other items to another one.

(not so obvious if we add golden bullions but I just have no enough time to expand this line of thought)

If we compare Bitcoin to fiat money things become less obvious and more interesting. The winner depends on the context. If the fiat money in question is USD in USA it wins in most (but not totally all) contexts. If the currency is Zimbabwe dollar then the winner is Bitcoin. And there is a full spectrum between those two.

As for the bubble - current rush on the cryptocurrencies is obviously speculative and the bust at some point seems to be imminent but when and how exactly it will come? Nobody knows. It may be a complete collapse but personally I don't see it as the highest probability (may be because it would be too boring). Other possibilities are * It may stabilize then float around some point (above or below its current value) like the price of the gold in the after-the-gold-standard world do * It may be replaced by some other cryptocurrency (Ethereum, Monero, Ripple etc) that better satisfy the requirements. There was something about guys in Australia who promise a coin with ten times better transaction throughput then Visa. And who knows what comes next * Bitcoin itself may evolve to became better currency (lighting network, SegWit etc) * Anything else.

76:

Let's go back to the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean Spice Trade. It took years for trades to become real, and the reputation of the merchants for keeping their deals was critical in keeping it working. IIRC, this is where the Hawala system came from. Note that Hawala basically runs on the honor system, and works more on the long-term balancing of accounts, than on the long-distance transfer of money.

Anyway, I did google "international trade blockchain," and it looks like a lot of people are now trying to make this work (e.g. this piece from the World Economic Forum).

So yes, one could write an SFF story about the use of some bastard descendant of a blockchain in a space opera. The argument against is that, if such a book comes out the day after Bitcoin bites it, then most people aren't going to buy the story. So the question is, do you feel lucky, writer?

77:
I've seen the argument that the price of bitcoin goes up because there's only a limited supply of bitcoin, so it's a good investment despite having no underlying value [...]

Hypothetically, if it was used as a currency like the aficionados like to promote it as, then the underlying value would simply be that people need it to buy their drugs or hard disk unlocking codes or whatnot from the mafia. In this world, the price would then indeed very slowly go up over the course of many years as the demand exceeded the supply.

A quick look at the actual price behavior should immediately rubbish that idea. They basically don't work as a transaction processing framework due to the inherent, incredible inefficiency of the blockchain... But as a meaningless bauble for the less sensible to trade via unregulated grey market brokerages, they work fine, and this is the basis of their trading price.

78:

Bitcoin is very clever social engineering, and terrible software engineering. It is designed to gradually make it more expensive to make more, which creates an incentive to buy and hold now. And to tell other people to buy and hold after you, yourself, has bought. Because the more people buy in, the higher the price goes, and then you as a relatively early adopter can sell out for profit.

It is a ponzi scheme that outsources the gladhanding of more victims to your victims, and the fact that it works makes me want to cry. This is not even a question of intelligence - Newton lost his shirt in the south sea bubble, it is simply one of those very stupid things even smart people fall for.

At no point during any of this is there any need for anyone to use it as a currency, and to a first approximation, nobody does. Because it is terribly designed as a currency.

Here is how you design a proper Crypto-Currency:

Step one: Be a bank. Or start one. In Switzerland, or the equivalent.

Step two, set up hardware for the generation in bulk of true random number sequences. Not pseudo random. I do not care how clever your algorithm for making them is, go away, we are using the real deal here. Geiger counters pointed at a handy mountain will do.

Step 3. Put one copy of each one-gigabyte pad of random numbers on a secure pseudo-phone you hand to customers. This device is Secure - in the sense that its entire operating system and network stack have been formally proven, and its attack surfaces are non-existent. (Well, people can steal it and beat the user id out of you. Do not see any way to solve this) All this device can do is call the bank server, and access your account over a one time-pad encrypted link. If you manage to do enough banking to go through a gigabyte of network activity.. well, your phone will require replacing from age before that, so... The server has the matching pad copy for each customer device, and since all activity is internal to the bank, noone can trace any of it. Or read it. You can tell someone is a customer, sure, but with any decent size of customer base and trivial random delays on transactions and / or just doing all transactions as timed operations (all phones call base once per hour. Regardless of whether they have business.) Network analytics wont work.

There, done. Costs : mostly designing the access "phone" and bank server to be natively secure, but per customer, the marginal cost is utterly negligible, and even the initial design effort should be reasonable - the required capability, and thus the complexity of the code that needs formal proving is very low and mostly already exists thanks to academic work.

This gets you an utterly untraceable economic transaction network proof against any adversary that does not mount a physical seizure of the bank, and more importantly, it can be expanded by depositing more regular cash at the bank.

79:

The primary purpose of every ICO is to enrich the issuer. There may be secondary purposes, but I wouldn't (ahem) bet on them.

Yeah, reminds a (very) little of early gold frauds. Here's a delicious[1] one (gold from seawater) from 1896: The Gold Accumulator Except that in ICOs they're proposing currencies pegged to new limited supply artificial materials, [crypto-currency-name]ium, and promising that early investors will get most of the gains. (I think; haven't looked at one of them to be honest.) (Amusing meta: in at least one load of that page, there were two advertisements, one for a gold dealer, and one for a bitcoin mining company.) [1] a [N]grandfather lost his substantial savings in a silver mining scam, so not being deliberately crass here.

Might drop some links later related to semi-plausible (i.e. passes the immediate-laugh-test) applications for blockchain, notably permissioned blockchain. Lots of dodgy stuff; fraud/scam/hype/lie detectors need to be fully operational, set to twitchy.

80:

Heteromeles noted: "Let's go back to the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean Spice Trade. It took years for trades to become real, and the reputation of the merchants for keeping their deals was critical in keeping it working."

Yes, as I noted in my "bank drafts by horse" example. It could work. But would the speed be acceptable given the pace of modern economies? I'm not sure. Once you've tasted Gigabit fiber, it's awfully hard to go back to 300 baud dialup with an acoustic coupler. Would the level of security be acceptable? How many ships never returned from the China or India trade? Would those losses be acceptable to investors today?

Perhaps more importantly, the sophistication of financial scams has improved enormously. We like to think that technology for preventing such scams is up to the challenge, but the criminals tend to stay one step ahead of the guardians. And fancy technological solutions only solve technological attacks. For example, public key encryption is a wonderful technology -- until someone steals your private key through social engineering. Security certificates and trust authorities are wonderful tools until someone hacks the company's Web site and steals credentials or forges their own.

Trust was feasible when you met the customer or vendor in person and had a chance to gut-feel whether they were reliable and talk to people who had been dealing with them for years and could vouch for their stability. And there was always the notion you could hire someone to track them down and break their legs if they absconded with your money. The notion of "trust" in the modern computer era is harder to imagine when you can't see the person, will likely never meet them, know that they might be Russian scam artists, and know that they are sufficiently anonymized they can disappear without a trace, taking your money and reputation with them.

81:

Step two, set up hardware for the generation in bulk of true random number sequences. Not pseudo random. I do not care how clever your algorithm for making them is, go away, we are using the real deal here. Geiger counters pointed at a handy mountain will do. Step 3. Put one copy of each one-gigabyte pad of random numbers on a secure pseudo-phone you hand to customers.

Insufficiently paranoid; doesn't protect against some esoteric attacks. (There's at least one paper to be written about defenses against such attacks. :-)

And yeah, A Fire Upon The Deep had a human planet in the low beyond that had built a business reputation for reliably distributing one time pads. In 3 parts with independent physical distribution typically, combined (XOR?) by users.

82:

I said: the 30kW of heat-death-of-the-Universe from a dozen servers turning and burning in the basement keeps everyone toasty.

And for the summer?

Open some windows? It's not an uninhabitable equatorial hellhole like Florida, it's France. If it gets hot enough vent the server heat out into the street where it can compete with a few thousand other heat engines turning and burning.

83:

Put the server farm in the attic. Use it to heat the air running through the HVAC in the winter, vent it to the outside in summer.

Actually, I think I mentioned this idea a long time ago, on this blog, although I was thinking of a distributed server farm rather than a mining system. Still, if everyone needs a big enough server in order to have a civilized life, there's no reason not to turn these turkeys into a cogeneration system of some sort. A few centuries ago, having the water heater embedded in the wall of the main cooking oven accomplished much the same thing.

84:

White nationalism has some overlap with survivalist doomsday prepper types, and for some reason bitcoin has become very popular with the preppers.

85:

Because they are very vulnerable to the affinity fraud? Ponzi schemes are nearly always affinity fraud, and the vector of infection for the pyramid-scheme affinity fraud that is bitcoin goes through the fringes of the right, primarily. Thus people who should really, really distrust something that only exists in the cloud. Ffs.

86:

Cheery thought - maybe Bitcoin and the other work-alikes are the Culture's way of weaning us from our childish obsession with money; at a suitable point they'll pull the plug on them by grabbing all the blocks, wreck everyone's economy, then introduce their version of an economy of abundance. It seems like the sort of thing Culture minds would come up with, if only as retaliation for endless terabytes of social media and cat videos. We probably won't like it...

87:

Remember, we're talking about interplanetary commerce, such as between Musk's ultimate gated community on Mars and the still-productive slums of Earth, or something. You can only speed that up so much.

This is also true for FTL Space Operas. The more I look at it, the more I think that planetary customs officers will really like blockchain technology, and that goes double with their equivalent of ag inspectors. After all, if you think that intercontinental transport of invasive organisms is a problem now, imagine how much fun interplanetary transport of invasive organisms (other than humans) will be. Having really good records of what's in the shipping containers in your starship's hold would be kind of mandatory as a prerequisite for obtaining landing rights.

88:

.. Unpack? There are ways that come to mind of attacking this system, but they are mostly aimed at things like attacking the reputational capital of the bank, not the math. (Because it is so secure, difficult to document you are not stealing peoples accounts. I mean, you would be crazy to, but it is difficult to defend against the libel)

89:

Thank you. I always distinguish between "libertarian", which I consider myself to be, and "Libertarian" which is something quite different, and extremely unsavory. OTOH, I also consider myself a "conservative", i.e., someone who wants to conserve the good features of the current situation, not someone who wants to return to the imagined good features of some past situation. That is really a reactionary. And I object to telefactors being called robots when they are really just remote control devices.

This is a continual problem with language. It's a feature that allows it to adapt to a changing situation, but it renders prior descriptions nearly worthless. So while I consider myself a libertarian conservative, I never describe myself that way to anyone unless I have time to first explain what I mean by those words.

90:

Ordinary money is stuff that a government promises to accept as a payoff so that it won't steal your property. Because of this it has value to people other than the government.

It's quite possible to argue either way as to whether the government should be able to make that kind of threat, or whether the word "steal" is appropriate for an action that's perfectly legal, etc., but it's that threat that gives money its value. It's not a commodity, or something that is inherently valuable. (I have occasionally suggested using a monetary standard that is inherently valuable, like monocrystalline silicon, but this would be subject to large fluctuations in value.)

91:

The bracket clause is contradictory. If it was inherently valuable - the value was a property of the stuff itself - then you would be able to depend on the value much as you are able to depend on the melting point. The large fluctuations in value are possible because what is called "the value" is a function of stuff made up by people.

Which leads me, at least, to considering that the computation involved in DNA transcription is efficient enough to get down to about 10x the Landauer limit, which is several orders of magnitude better than artificial computing technologies. And then to imagining the possibility of using DNA-type computation to do bitcoin computations (it's probably quite well suited to at least some common cryptographic computations, though I don't know if that's relevant to bitcoin), and outperforming the Chinese server farms with a few buckets of genetically-engineered self-replicating organic bitcoin goo. (Which once it's done what you want it to, can be eaten, as a bonus.)

92:

Right. That fits with the vibe I get that someone describing themselves as a "libertarian" is certainly concerned with their own liberty, but is not concerned with trampling on that of others in pursuit of their own.

93:

That is not why you should not back money with inherent value. You should refrain from doing that because enough money has to exist to facilitate the sum total of all your commerce and liquid-store-of-value needs, and if money is backed by directly useful stuff, that is an enormous amount of value taken out of use to gather dust in a vault somewhere to no good end, directly making the world that much poorer

94:

Last night I tweeted an intemperate opinion [...] that we need to ban Bitcoin because it's fucking our carbon emissions.

I was having pretty much the exact same thoughts yesterday. Stop thinking with my brain, Charlie, I'm using it to draw comics. Or at least buy me a beer, geez. :)

(I know you didn't put it there via Twitter, either, as I've been taking ever-longer Twitter sabbaticals. Come to Mastodon, we have goofy server names and less nazis.)

Bitcoin's a perfect symbol of the death throes of capitalism, really. Convert energy directly into global warming and a tiny fictional piece of "value" for a small number of people who were already rich, and a small number of people who got rich riding the wave.

The damn thing just hit $10k tonight and I'm increasingly sure that BTC as it is now is never gonna be The Future Of Money. It's not gonna be useful for that until everyone has a cryptocurrency miner running on their phones, helping to validate everyone's transactions at a much higher speed than the current network can, for a hell of a lot less electricity.

All of that doesn't stop me from selling the .3btc I had on Coinbase and cashing that out though. That's my next couple month's rent paid by the Dark Cyberpunk Future.

95:

The energy usage estimates for bitcoin mining have been around for a while, e.g. Bitcoin Mining and its Energy Footprint (2014, O’Dwyer and Malone). We also show that the power currently used for Bitcoin mining is comparable to Ireland’s electricity consumption. or A Cost of Production Model for Bitcoin (2015, Hayes) And the curves could have been drawn far earlier. Neither of those papers mentions carbon/co2. People were mostly ignoring them; not sure when people generally[1] realized that energy usage meant CO2 emissions, and not sure why it's emerging as a widespread concern now, but not complaining. Bitcoin isn't getting any less absurd. :-) [1] No points for realizing it at the time or earlier(including myself in that): the key is mainstreaming the concern.

96:

Cheery thought - maybe Bitcoin and the other work-alikes are the Culture's way of weaning us from our childish obsession with money; at a suitable point they'll pull the plug on them by grabbing all the blocks, wreck everyone's economy, then introduce their version of an economy of abundance. Bitcoin still has some mystery associated with it, and that speculation has been around, perhaps here. "Culture" generically means interventionists, who put options to disrupt global economies in place, or encourage them. Or maybe for some other reason. Fun to speculate. I would not be surprised. :-)

97:

So any creative ideas about how to repurpose all the bitcoining mining operations once the crash has happened? Or are we just going to have miner graveyards sitting beside dams all over the world?

98:

The big problem with bitcoin is that it only looks decentralized. If you look at how it works, it gives big advantages to whomever can command immense computing resources and rapid network speeds. When bitcoin first came out it was a big hit with the gamers who had oversized gaming rigs capable of turning acres of Excel spreadsheets into pico-bit thick data crumbles. Once bitcoin mining and transaction processing started becoming profitable, the big guys moved in with their supercomputer arrays capable of crushing MMPORGs of gaming rigs into their component transistors.

Let's ignore the limited number of bitcoins that could ever be mined. Let's ignore the designed in restrictions on the transaction processing rate that makes bitcoin worthless as a general purpose transaction processing system. Let's ignore the bitcoin protocol's inability to scale either in scope or temporally. Ignore all that, and bitcoin will still only be profitable for a small set of highly capitalized miners and transaction processors, like the guys in Inner Mongolia with their coal mines and specialized server farms, and will only be useful for those needing to perform money transfers where it is worth paying a premium for secrecy.

Bitcoin may have fascinated the gamer crowd, but they were always small fry. Like the diesel engine, invented as a prime mover for the small workman but winding up as the ultimate centralized, capital intensive power source, bitcoin's final customer base is going to be large players who want to move large sums of money while avoiding scrutiny. I'm not surprised that bitcoin attracted a certain crowd of power worshippers, and I won't be surprised if they continue to push bitcoin even as it becomes increasingly obvious that they are just two bit tools.

99:
Or are we just going to have miner graveyards sitting beside dams all over the world?

Sadly, the bulk of the mining these days seems to be done by special computer chips which can't really do anything except compute SHA-256. They're custom built for bitcoin mining and nothing else.

Perhaps the air conditioned boxes full of metal racks can be used to shelter goats during a heat wave -- who knows?

100:

Regarding the electricity usage estimates for the Bitcoin network, I can't find what hardware is assumed to be running it. This is roughly the efficiency that I've seen by hardware generation, in Megahashes/Joule:

CPUs: 0.1 GPUs (AMD): 2 FPGAs: 20 ASICs: 1000 (although the Antminer S9 apparently does 10K)

101:

In fact, doing a bit of math (might not be super wise at this time of the day), using an estimated 12e9 Mhashes/s as the current network hashrate, combined with the highest ASIC estimate I could find (10,000 MHashes/s/Watt for Antminer S9), it comes out to around 1200 kilowatts for the whole network, which to me doesn't sound so insane.

Looking through Charlie's digiconomist link, they claim to use an efficiency estimate of 3,500 Mhashes/s/Watt, but that still sounds like it would be off by a lot from the energy full countries run.

Hopefully someone can check my numbers, I must be missing something.

102:

I spent much of this year literally writing a book on this stuff, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. (See my link.)

The edgy libertarians were, of course, in it from the start - it was started by ancap cypherpunks. As usual, the Extropians are ultimately to blame. I wrote a chapter about this, but the book I cribbed from was The Politics of Bitcoin by David Golumbia, which nails down every dot of Bitcoin's ideological descent.

I must note that the technology, blockchain, is pants too. I turned the book site into a bitcoin/blockchain news blog, and I'm consistently finding it's much less than it's painted as. The hype is, literally, Bitcoin hype with the buzzword changed to "blockchain" - whatever the claim, and whatever the actual technology.

Most business "blockchain" is not in fact the full Bitcoin-style blockchain, with proof-of-work and trustless competition and a currency - the term is getting applied to simple append-only transaction ledgers with hashes for tamper-proofing. This is, of course, excellent stuff! Geeks know it as git. And we had it in 2005, four years before Bitcoin. What's good is not new and what's new turns out not to be any good.

Everything bitcoin and blockchain is a fabulously layered world of fractal incompetence and arrogance. I have been wrong about Bitcoin before, and it's been whenever I assumed the market was in any way sensible or rational and not actually made up of lemmings on PCP.

103:

the Great Bitcoin Bust Who gets hurt if BTC goes under? Do we care? Or are those CHinese remote towns just going to shrivel up & the inhabitants starve? Apart from them, as far as I can see BTC crash-&-burning & the more spectacularly the better could be an (almost) unalloyed good. Discuss?

104:

Her blueprint for survival also depends upon working internet: part of her money, assuming she needs some after civilization collapses, is in bitcoin. And THERE is it's (other) weak spot - needs stable, dependable, regular electric power supplies ... after a collapse, yeah, right. I'm having difficulty comprehending this level of stupid.

105:

And WHAT IS WRONG WITH "endless terabytes of cat videos." ??

106:

Talikng of which A Canadian Lynx, behaving as if it was a large domesic moggy He is being brushed, & the rolling & furious rumble-purring are very familiar to any human cat-servant. "Dangerous wild animal", yeah ....

107:

See also my reply regarding "Liberty" as regarded in late Republican Rome. I think the parallel defintions are very nearly congruent. Which is, incidentally, not a good or easy analogy, once you think of it. Is the USA in that pre-revolutionary civil war period & is T Donald Rump Marius or Sulla?

108:

I'm staying well clear - I don't trust it or understand how it ever got to be any more "real" than the guys who play online RPGs to win magic items etc.

I'm with Warren Buffett, who noted, "never invest in something you don't understand".

Cryptocurrencies really fit the bill here; you need some serious math chops to understand how they even work, they're vulnerable to the (admittedly remote) risk of a mathematical breakthrough destroying their integrity, and that's before we even get to the whacky sociological epiphenomena surrounding them in use: for example, the weird anecdotes about people using the free electricity for their Tesla to run miners. (Not possible with Bitcoin any more, but might be workable with other currencies ...)

At this point we're getting well into "buy my magical gizmo that extracts gold from the water coming out of your taps!!!" territory.

109:

So as far as I can tell what we have with Bitcoin is a classic Tulip Bubble. What am I missing?

What you are missing is that Bitcoin is popular with people who don't understand money, let alone economics. Just like goldbugs, who think gold has some magical inherent value, unlike "fiat currency".

110:

You specifically limit your complaint to bitcoin and not blockchain. But to me, it looks like the power consumption issue is probably inherent to blockchain. Am I wrong?

Yes and no.

Blockchain power consumption increases as your chain gets bigger. But if you're using blockchain simply as an authentication log for some database, you can end one chain and start up a new one, thereby forking it.

The problem with bitcoin is that new coins are paid out in return for performing reconciliation on the existing chain. So you can't fork the chain without addressing the problem of an expanding currency (BTC was designed to be fixed in size — i.e. by a goldbug who doesn't understand money).

111:

Ordinary money is stuff that a government promises to accept as a payoff so that it won't steal your property.

That bit about "steal your property" sounds very big-L libertarian to me since the only thing that permits property to be owned by individuals in this world is a government, whether its an allotment committee or a world-spanning military dictatorship like the US. No government, no property rights for anyone, including "small-l" libertarians.

Ordinary money is debt, public IOUs issued by a government to fund the government, pay salaries, buy stuff, rent office space, encourage worthy causes etc. Those IOUs are backed by the government's word, its promise to pay the bearer on demand etc. Because folks trust that word (full faith and credit) they are willing to circulate those IOUs between each other as tokens of wealth. When the faith is lost, they become like Confederate dollars, worthless. BTC and its clones are running on that full faith and credit at the moment but there's no real organisation "backing" them, heck even the first bitcoiner ever (Satoshi) is anonymous and keeping his/her/their head down.

Taxes aren't paid to fund government, they're actually paid to destroy money, to take it out of circulation and prevent rampant inflation since any government can always print more IOUs if they need to. Too many IOUs in circulation without a matching economy to use them up makes them worth less (inflation) and eventually that "full faith" deal breaks down.

Time was our local co-operative store network had their own actual money, plastic coins paid out as a dividend that could only be used in their stores but they COULD be used as money there because people believed they were worth something in the stores. They were another form of public IOU but more limited in scope. Nowadays the "divi" is paid directly to the members in Sterling.

112:

So basically, blockchains are most useful as evidence chains, of the type, "X said Y at spacetime Z"?

Yes.

Where we should be using them is for certification of the evidence chain in distribution of life-critical items. For example, to log that a quality assurance lab has taken random samples from this batch of antibiotics, run them through a GC-MS rig, and confirmed that they are in fact genuine antibiotics and not floor-sweepings from a Chinese backstreet factory churning out counterfeits. (How to permanently tag a physical object with a blockchain ID is an interesting question. SmartWater perhaps?)

113:

Here is how you design a proper Crypto-Currency: Step one: Be a bank.

In principle, this could work.

In practice ...

Well, things might have changed in the 16 years since I left DataCash, but my experience of Banking IT staff is that it consists of a vast sea of mediocrity punctuated by the odd isolated expert who knows their shit. When they need IT expertise they hire in contractors (usually via one of the Big Five audit firms first, or from an outfit like IBM or HP who specialize in servicing enterprises like banks). When they need banking expertise they send a banker. But you don't get promoted to board level within a bank by specializing in computer science, any more than you get promoted to C-suite territory in the CIA by wandering the hillsides of Kandahar speaking Pashtun to the tribesmen in hope of figuring out what the Taliban are going to do next.

114:

the vector of infection for the pyramid-scheme affinity fraud that is bitcoin goes through the fringes of the right

Because International Banking is a Jewish Conspiracy, don'tcha know? As is "fiat currency" and fractional reserve banking, apparently.

(As my wife commented yesterday, "I'm still waiting for my pay-out for joining the hidden rulers of the world".)

This is some Protocols of the Elders of Zion shit right here, and it's baked into the folk memory of white supremacists and racists.

115:

The housing Ponzi scheme was started in the 1960s in the UK, and some of us noted that it was such (and so eventually going to fail) in the early 1970s. I am flabberghasted at how long it has been kept going - when it does crash, it's going to be horrific. No, it didn't pop, not even in 2008, but merely deflated - here, it scarcely did that. The point is that our house prices are three times the maximum viable value, so a crash would be at least a factor of three drop in prices. And, no, 'building more houses' is not a solution. An ordwerly deflation is possible in theory, if damn hard, but I don't see the political will.

116:

Here's a thought: maybe we could buy off the simplistic goldbug-minded "money is a commodity" thinkers by proposing a coal standard? That is: treat burnable fossil carbon as money?

Like BTC, there's a finite amount of it remaining to be mined. Like BTC, mining the last reserves gets incrementally harder over time. Unlike BTC, if you burn it, it's gone for good, so there's an incentive to stockpile it and not burn it (ideally by stockpiling it in the ground, where it comes from, by buying land title to fossil fuel reserves).

Done right, maybe we could turn the libertarian fringe into fanatical carbon conservationists?

117:

Thanks for that insight. The extropian connection should not surprise me ...

118:

"Step two, set up hardware for the generation in bulk of true random number sequences. Not pseudo random. I do not care how clever your algorithm for making them is, go away, we are using the real deal here. Geiger counters pointed at a handy mountain will do."

No, it won't, not reliably, though it IS a useful component. I gave a talk on that for a cryptography conference some time ago. The executive summary is that the required properties for statistical and cryptographic random numbers are different, and neither will do for the other - despite claims of many compscis, who should know better. Yes, a true random sequence is perfect for both, but that's theory, not practice.

One good approach is to take multiple, independent sources, including (say) a few entirely separate Geiger counter outputs and a couple of excellent pseudorandom sequences (based on different mathematics), normalise the first ones (separately) and exclusive or all of them together. The pseudorandom sequences eliminate the (Nth order) biasses in the Geiger counter outputs that have got through the normalisation.

119:

That bit about "steal your property" sounds very big-L libertarian to me

It is, however, straight out of Graeber on debt and the origins of money in the early bronze age. Just replace "property" with crops and "government" with "the king's soldiers, marching on campaign".

King does not want his army to steal the crops and starve/kill his peasant subjects. That sort of thing triggers uprisings. So King tells the peasants that tax, formerly paid in the shape of a tithe of the crop, has to be paid using these weird tokens. He then gives tokens to the soldiers, and tells them to pay for their provisions. Peasants are still tithing the king, but they receive a token that can be returned to indicate they've paid their tax. If they're over-tithed, maybe some other peasant who has no tokens because the army hasn't rolled over their farm will accept tokens in return for grain? And so the cycle gets started.

But this predates the availability of credit: money was a tool for keeping track of food in this model. It took a lot of iterations and generalizations for loans, banking, and credit to show up, and I'm not sure the libertarians ever really understood how complicated it's all become: they don't generally seem good at handling abstractions, even though they fetishize one (liberty).

120:

My tame expert says that there is a real problem with distributed currencies - all known solutions use resources that are super-linear with scale. The 'exception' is a trusted key hierarchy - i.e. a virtual bank.

121:

>>This gets you an utterly untraceable economic transaction network proof against any adversary that does not mount a physical seizure of the bank, and more importantly, it can be expanded by depositing more regular cash at the bank.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this makes it not a proper Crypto-Currency. Single point of failure.

122:

There's a lot of crypto-currency madness right now.

A few years back when bitcoin suddenly exploded I was hanging out at a local hackspace on the open night when some young women visiting started asked if there was anyone who could talk about bitcoin for "a report" they were doing. I assumed students from the local uni doing a paper on it for some class.

I've never got involved in it but I'm familiar enough with crypto to have a reasonable understanding of it's workings. Ran through some of the basics of crypto, keys and who has control of keys under various models. Absolute basic stuff.

Later got a thankyou email. Turned out they weren't students but rather worked for a london finance house and the "report" was for that firm. I was struck by a moment of "holy shit people are literally making decisions about this shit based on 'what some guy in a hackspace told me over beer'"

Etherium and smart contracts are even more crazy. People seem to be throwing fistfuls of money at things like smart contracts with no idea whatsoever what they're throwing their money at. Madness like the DAO where people were putting tens of millions in the control of code that's not even been formally proven. (and not even any apparent attempt to do so) Proving code is expensive and slow but when it's code to control that much in assets you'd expect it as a bare minimum.

For that matter the software carrying billions worth of these currencies is also cobbled together with regular security flaws.

It's insanity. There's going to be some big crashes though I suspect crypto-currencies are here to stay in some form.

If any really big actor like the US government decided tomorrow they wanted to do away with bitcoin they could probably pretty easily wipe it out for less than the cost of a single Stealth Bomber. They could commission enough ASIC's to destroy almost every crypto currencies trust and stamp all over them.

If the chinese government wanted to screw with bitcoin they wouldn't even have to hunt down miners, they could just use their magical firewall powers and some selective organised DOSing to mess with the protocol to split the network into fragments for a few hours, when the networks fragments reconnect the one with the most compute wins (probably the section within china) and anyone who's bought or sold things elsewhere: those transactions get reversed, trust in the network takes a big hit, prices collapse and the number of miners massively decreases.

I can easily imagine that when more of the infrastructure kinks are worked at some point more traditional entities are going to start issuing their own currencies using bitcoin-like infrastructure but without the mining element and with their coins as more simple fiat currencies. Modified blockchain-like tech may very well get recycled into such systems to make auditing, taxation and tracking of cash etc more bullet proof.

I think the link between the Libertarians / Alt right / etc and cryptocurrencies is mostly down to oddball fringe things attracting oddball fringe people. The historical nazis picked up support from lots of weird fringe groups almost purely because they were fringe groups like the animal rights crowd.

123:

I wonder if some bright, wealthy but not entirely sensible person is hoping to use bitcoin as a blunt instrument to knock down the existing order, that the bulk of their worth is inextricably tied to, to usher in their fantasy order?

124:

The origins of money in history aren't that important to what money has become today, a tokenisation of the structural and material wealth of a nation however imperfectly distributed. Big-L and small-l libertarians are fixated on the Shiny! and can't or won't see past the metal and paper and bits-on-a-disk to what money really is. They can continue in their delusions and beliefs in comfort only as long as most of the rest of the population do hold "full faith and credit" in the government's debt instruments.

125:

Very 'libertarian'. Any medium of exchange before there was such a social organisation (and things like armies came late) is clearly 'not money'; I have no idea which theory is right, but that's not my point. It is just as they carefully airbrush out the history (and morality) of how 'their' property came to be 'theirs'. As the poem goes:

The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from the goose.

126:

I believe that a lot of bitcoin action is occurring in the criminal field. It's difficult to become rich doing drugs, people trafficking etc. these days without compliant banks and financial organisations and they're getting tracked down and stomped on a lot. Russian oligarchs had large amonuts of money in Bank of Cyprus accounts for access to EU institutions and it was more and more difficult to hide them and eventually it all went tits-up for them. The Panama Papers and other public releases of supposedly-private financial data are also hitting such folks hard.

The supposed anonymity of Bitcoin is very tempting to such people, allowing them to move wealth around the world with less inspection and legal limitations. So Bitcoin costs a bit more as the "price" goes up? Don't care, there's more money coming along the criminal pipeline and if that money's stuck in Russia or the US in trackable roubles and dollars then it's worth less anyway. Bitcoin is mobile wealth and that's worth a big premium for many folks and unlike other fungible materials like gold, armaments, cocaine, opium etc. it's bits in a wire not solid objects that can't reliably get through a Customs inspection any more.

127:

Ordinary money is stuff that a government promises to accept as a payoff so that it won't steal your property. Because of this it has value to people other than the government.

No offence intended, but that sentence is heavily packed with potentially dubious implications. Inappropriate reification is common when people talk about government and/or property, particularly from a right wing stance, which then gets echoed in wider discussion.

First "government" is not a specific object or entity, rather it is the ruling system (i.e. what creates, maintains & modifies the rules) of a society: that can be the individual who issues arbitrary commands to everyone else who obey them (possibly for fear of the armed thugs who will kill them up if they don't, or for whatever other reason), through to a direct participatory democracy where all decisions are decided by collective votes, and everything in between.

Secondly, "property" is meaningless outwith a society, being the set of rules that a society has to permit individual member shared or exclusive use of corporeal items and/or areas of space AND to call upon services of other members of the society.

(As a side note, in Gaelic there are two different grammatical possessive forms, one for inherent/inalienable items like "my hair", "my mother" mo and one for property like "my knife" aig, agam. A nice distinction, not so immediately apparent in the English language.)

So, no "government" means no "property". That's before we unpack the meanings of "promise" and "steal".

But broadly yes, "money" usually means the token that the society accepts as the book-keeping to show one has completed ones obligations or has a right to call on resources or obligations due.

So basically, blockchains are most useful as evidence chains, of the type, "X said Y at spacetime Z"?

Yes.

Where we should be using them is for certification of the evidence chain in distribution of life-critical items.

One obvious use would be for forensic chain of evidence certification when digital evidence is obtained: bearing in mind the legal/criminal justice professions usual uptake of new technology I am confident it would probably be accepted for such by the C25th...

128:

Given the discussion of cryptocurrencies, people might like to know that the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 is doing a discussion on the subject now (time slot 12:30 to 13:00 GMT if you want to find it on iplayer).

129:

Slight addition: This is some Protocols of the Elders of Zion shit right here, and it's baked into the folk memory of white supremacists and racists.... and quite a few "muslim organisations" - copies of "the Protocols" have been found for sale in quite a few bookshops in the UK, euw .... Please note the quote-marks.

130: 45 - Nice piece of alt'physics even.
131:

Don't worry, Brexit will trigger it, along with a few other nasties ....

132:

I completely agree.

As for a political will to create a "soft landing" at least some of them believe the "big lies" that:- 1) House prices are real money. They're not, and you can't even make a profit until/unless you can at least partially cash out, say by selling your parents' house in Sarf Larndarn and moving somewhere cheaper. 2) House price inflation is an infinite inflationary spiral.

133:

BUGGER - above was meant to be a reply to EC @ 115

134:

This is really a strange mixture of, um, things. The children of Satoshi in bed with oligarchs, neo nazis, old nazis and miners in a high rise in Shenzen, all laying waste to the abandoned settlements of the Hambacher Forst. One would imagine Milo Yiannopoulos reading this on his iPhoneX and whispering in anger, „too soon, he has found out, now we have to act...“

comic relief: The comparison with Ireland is not valid because of the electric fence they'll have to build after brexit.

But, this sounds really like you have developed a more conservative view of the world. I've observed this with some friends of mine, growing older, becoming conservative. And suddenly we argue about kickstarter, bitcoin and why electric cars are evil.

Why the Heinlein-in-reverse ?

135:

A typical definition of libertarian is a believer in free will or an advocate of liberty. Semantic drift certainly occurs but misappropriation by certain groups is more common. In my country Republicans call themselves conservatives for example. There is sometimes a grain of truth in the appropriation process but often it is just seeking respectable cover for their positions and using the term to confer legitimacy. I think it is important to resist this process. I have recently seen sexism calling itself conservatism. Neo-Nazis calling themselves libertarians is absurd but it can confer legitimacy in the eyes of the naive. The media's willingness to be complicit in this is very disturbing. Every convicted murderer claims to be innocent but if he is quoted it should be as 'convicted murderer claims innocence' not as 'innocent man protests his conviction'. A politician however can claim to be fiscally responsible when he is anything but that without correction.

On this blog 'libertarian' usually draws hostility but on further review it is usually toward some group that is really far from the definition. Libertarians, both the real and the self-styled, are so varied that the term as used means almost nothing now.

136:

That was the original definition, yes. But it is almost entirely unlike the, er, 'philosophy' of the people who call themselves libertarians today. It's more than semantic drift - it's an abuse of terminology for the purposes of propaganda.

137:

Yeah. And to Greg Tingey. It's why I am hoping for the worst in the next 4 months - that MIGHT be enough to bring down the current government, get a second referendum, cancel Brexit (or at least sign up to an EEA etc. deal) and restore some sanity to politics. It's not what I am expecting.

138:

But, this sounds really like you have developed a more conservative view of the world.

Only in opposition to today's self-proclaimed conservatives, who are frankly terrifying radicals (who, in extreme cases — Steve Bannon springs to mind — are Leninist insurgents who want to smash the existing system so they can rebuild it with one of their own).

I'm all for electric self-driving cars, as long as they're properly engineered with safety in mind (third parties, not just the driver's). Kickstarter? I've supported some campaigns — I'm wary of its potential for supporting rip-offs and fraud, but I'm not shrieking for a ban on it. Blockchain? Also useful in its place.

On the other hand, a cryptocurrency with baked-in libertarian values, designed by people who want to trash the existing financial system, and beloved of neo-nazis? Excuse me for being a little bit skeptical, now ...!

139:

I'm sure banning Bitcoin will not be yet another precedent for banning other activities people do on their computers.

/s

140:
"Are you a Jew?" asked one egg.

That one made me laugh out loud -- got some funny looks in the office.

141:
Is the USA in that pre-revolutionary civil war period & is T Donald Rump Marius or Sulla?

You're not the first to draw that analogy.

142:

I'm all for electric self-driving cars, as long as they're properly engineered with safety in mind (third parties, not just the driver's).

May I suggest a mandatory pedestrian detection test where the team leaders of the development team are the pedestrians?

143:

I'm having difficulty comprehending this level of stupid.
Yeah, how could anybody be so dumb that they don't know the post-apocalypse money will be based on the stable value of the bottle cap.

144:

Heteromeles noted: "Remember, we're talking about interplanetary commerce"

Sorry, didn't notice that you'd changed horses midstream; your original post, which is what I replied to, specified "interstellar", not "interplanetary". Interplanetary time lags are far more manageable, though still not ideal (think "arbitrage").

Heteromeles: "Having really good records of what's in the shipping containers in your starship's hold would be kind of mandatory as a prerequisite for obtaining landing rights."

Yes, in principle, but in practice, it doesn't work that way. We nominally have such a system in place now. The problem is that for any busy port, there are far more cargo containers than there are inspectors available to inspect them. The inevitable result is that a lot of stuff slips past inspection because the inspection is based on random or pseudo-random sampling. Cocaine is labeled "whole-grain white flour", cargos of human slaves are labeled "tourist souvenirs", and so on. Inspectors may take such claims on faith, particularly if that faith is lubricated by bribes. And it's not necessarily the shipper who's behaving illegally; it's relatively easy to crack open a container and fill it with your own swag. Doubly so for intermodal transport, where the containers are unguarded while a trucker is filling up on coffee at a truck stop. Block chain only tells you that the shipper fervently believes that their container holds flour or souvenirs, not that those are the actual contents. And the shipper may be correct initially, but not after their container has been opened and re-sealed.

Charlie noted: "maybe we could buy off the simplistic goldbug-minded "money is a commodity" thinkers by proposing a coal standard? That is: treat burnable fossil carbon as money?"

In the carbon emission market, they call that "cap and trade" and "emission permits". G It's not clear whether the system actually works, since it requires as a bare minimum that the cap be set low enough to force emission reductions and that the cap is lowered over time. (Canada's province of British Columbia has recently had considerable success with carbon taxes rather than cap and trade.) Carbon credits for tree planting (etc.) seems to be a bit more equivocal in terms of their success.

145:

I'm sure banning Bitcoin will not be yet another precedent for banning other activities people do on their computers.

That ship already sailed.

Or are you proposing to decriminalize child pornography?

146:

Oh dear - and - does anyone else agree with us on that subject? ( USA = Pre civil wars late-republican Rome )

147:

The problem there is not the internal car systems, it's the vulnerability to hacking, as per "smart" meters.

148:

Agreed, if we're talking about inter-whatever-planetary commerce on the current scale.

Countries tend to be very stupid about borders, to the extent that right now, a new species arrives every month (possibly every week) in places like Hawai'i and California. The Ag Inspectors are good but underfunded, and so we end up, at random times, with the multi-million dollar messes that new invasives taking hold cause (it costs in the neighborhood of $10-15 million to find biocontrols for invasives and vet them properly, and that's for species where biocontrol is likely to work. I've been on the periphery of efforts to control the shothole borers that are nuking trees in southern California right now, that's how I know the cost. Most of it is paying for skilled labor.).

Now, if we're talking about a small colony on another planet, they'd better be carefully checking everything that comes in. Unlike a giant country like the US, they don't have the resources to deal with an invasive species, be it a pathogen or a pest. Hopefully they won't be overwhelmed by incoming shipments. I was looking at this for story possibilities, again because of what I've learned about just how complicated it is to deal with this kind of thing, and how hard people work at it. One of the best local workers lost his arm on the job and is still at it...

As for using coal as money, it's a great joke. The problem is that it's like using diamonds for pocket change--quality varies so much that they're not precisely exchangeable (1 carat diamonds are not all the same price, and the same with lumps of coal). The US used to brag about being the Saudi Arabia of coal, but reportedly much of the coal is of such low quality that under normal mining procedures, it would take more energy to get it out than it contains (this may well be where mountain-top mining came from, due also to demands for low-sulfur coal to deal with acid rain).

As for cap-and-trade, I suspect the problem isn't the gamesmanship that's going on with it, it's more fundamental: according to at least one analysis (this pdf from 2013, but I think there are more recent ones), no major industry is profitable if they have to pay the costs of pollution and resource depletion that they currently externalize. Cap-and-trade is merely a way to wind down the petrochemical industries without devastating everything, but the externalities problem equally applies to things like livestock production and farming major crops like wheat and rice. We'll see if cap-and-trade ever works, but I do think it's much better than the uncontrolled alternatives.

Global civilization has at least some characteristics of a bubble, whose collapse has been predicted for centuries. Fortunately for us, there have been enough believers in the full faith and credit of civilization that we keep patching things up and making the whole system clunk along, regardless of its many and fundamental flaws. It's weird, but then again, none of us would be here if our predecessors hadn't been big enough "fools" to buy into the system. Maybe that's why we keep blowing financial bubbles of our own.

149:

No, that's only ONE of the problems.

The uses for terrorism do not necessarily even involve hacking. Any vehicle that can can have a trip programmed into it becomes equivalent to a drone.

Another is the risk (nay, near-certainty, in the UK) that the systems will be deemed to be faultless, in the absence of conclusive proof to the contrary. That's not good news for pedestrians or, worse, cyclists - the latter ALREADY have that problem with most police forces in the UK. Consider an extreme case - a recumbent bike - despite claims, they are extremely visible to anyone who is actually looking - or a cyclist who has already taken a spill. There is essentially damn-all chance that the autonomous vehicles will be tested against those, so Cthulhu alone knows how they will react.

150:
Blockchain power consumption increases as your chain gets bigger. But if you're using blockchain simply as an authentication log for some database, you can end one chain and start up a new one, thereby forking it.

Disagree. Primarily, blockchain power consumption increases because it's envisioned as a distributed fault-tolerant system that anyone can join. The power consumption isn't an algorithmic side effect, it's an economics ploy.

Generally, a distributed consensus algorithm is only secure as long as the "good" actors control 51% of the votes on the network. Otherwise, a bad actor can rewind history and make a new one with different facts. This means you need some way of limiting the number of voters.

The way blockchains work, the method to limit voters is to equate votes with electricity (proof-of-work). This way, anyone wanting to seize control has to spend real money -- but as the blockchain becomes more valuable, it requires more and more wasted money to keep it out of reach of bad actors.

If you take away the proof-of-work and replace it with digital signatures or something, then the power consumption should be roughly constant for each block added to the chain. But then, why call this "blockchain" at all? It's really just chained signatures.

I submit that to a first approximation, "blockchain" is useful for nothing at all. The only use to which it's well suited is for crypto-currency itself, but that use would be better served simply by limiting the number of votes and using digital signatures.

151:
Where we should be using them is for certification of the evidence chain in distribution of life-critical items.

But why use a blockchain for this? The point isn't to crowd-source the certification so an unknown number of anonymous people attest to the distribution log by burning money in effigy.

All you're really looking for here is attestation by known people. That is, each time a tech receives or sends something, she plugs her badge in and types in a password (and her partner does the same as witness). There's no distributed algorithm or P2P network or anything, just an append-only log file.

152:

Heteromeles noted: "Now, if we're talking about a small colony on another planet, they'd better be carefully checking everything that comes in. Unlike a giant country like the US, they don't have the resources to deal with an invasive species, be it a pathogen or a pest."

The risk of interplanetary and interstellar invasives is a really interesting question. Whether this is a serious risk is going to depend on how similar the biospheres and biochemistries are. Any colony world suitable for humans is likely to be equally hospitable for our pests (e.g., rats) if the biochemistries are sufficiently compatible. I suspect that the odds of completely compatible amino acids are very low, suggesting that a pest from one world is likely to starve to death on a world with a significantly different biochemistry. And there are many other categories of metabolites that are likely to be so different that they're either outright toxic or have no nutritional value for terrestrial life -- and vice versa for invasions of our planet. Then there are micronutrient and microbiome issues.

That's not to say an invasive pest won't cause all kinds of grief until the last one starves to death. Hereabouts, we have squirrels that nibble all our garden crops to death even though they can't eat the fruits and vegetables. But major damage to an ecosystem is most likely if the biochemistry is very similar, thereby allowing the pests to survive long enough to become a problem.

Seems like this would be a great topic for a future guest blog by you when Charlie's overwhelmed with work.

In relation to your other point: Given the high cost of controlling (and of failing to control) invasive species, it's a false economy not hiring many more inspectors and applying really tight controls on imports and exports. It makes no sense downsizing the inspection staff to save money and hoping (in the face of strong evidence to the contrary) that nothing bad will happen. But asking importers to pay for part of these costs would raise their costs, thereby defeating the purpose of offshoring jobs. The importers might actually have to hire locally and pay a living wage. Thus, it won't happen.

153:

Re: BlockChain

This popped up in my Nature news email this morning. To my non-scientist eye looks like this year's fad in tech-collaboration tools.

https://www.researchinformation.info/news/analysis-opinion/what-blockchain-research

Re: BitCoin:

Okay - have zero expertise in tech but the bits of finance that I do understand about this offering keep me coming back to:

(a) Where are the transactional taxes in all of this? Doubt there's a gov't on this planet that doesn't charge transactional taxes, so if taxes are also embedded in the history of the BitCoin, then less chance of users not paying taxes. No more Panama papers! (Otherwise, it's in the best interest of gov't any/everywhere to ban 'cyber-currency'.)

(b) Crowd-sourcing computational energy - corps running such currencies could easily sign up members as part of their computational farms, i.e., that laptop or three at home that your family isn't using during office/school hours or while you're asleep. (Such crowd-sourcing has been in use for crowd science for decades now.)

(c) If (b) happens, there will be a greater push by ISPs to control access, connection speeds, memory/data storage. Alternatively, ISPs could set their rates to time of day usage same as electricity providers to reduce the chances of their subscribers 'illegally re-selling' bandwidth/access/storage and continually using all of the bandwidth that they're entitled to (but actually hardly ever use).

(d) Cloud computing/storage. My understanding is that there's a major push for almost everyone to go to cloud computing. If that happens, then control over BitCoin and blockchain automatically goes to ISPs - doesn't it?

154:

That ship already sailed.

Or are you proposing to decriminalize child pornography?

Sigh.

Have you considered the possibility that it may not be wise to blow even more wind into the sails of said ship?

You know, the best way to eliminate child pornography is a system that constantly monitors the content and input/output of every computer in the world. You could detect and stop child pornography at the point of its manufacture. You could detect and stop every other content-related crime.

Would you consider the existence of such a system worth it, if it meant no more child porn? And if not, where do you draw the line?

155:

It's more complicated than that.

One red herring is the whole amino acids thing. A lot of organisms synthesize amino acids. We're actually unusual in the number of amino acids we do not synthesize (as with vitamins), but unless there's a complete mismatch between our entire suites of amino acids, probably at least some bacteria, fungi, or whatever might slip through, find something they like (your eyebrows, perhaps) and start growing and spreading.

That's not the biggest problem though. The biggest problem is Earth, which is this enormous reservoir of propagules just waiting to find a new home somewhere else. A Gaian colony is basically a semi-closed propagule of the Gaian biosphere planted on some other world. Assuming the colonized world has its own biosphere (and the more I see, the more I think this isn't as stupid as it sounds), there's going to be all sorts of coevolution happening where the two biospheres meet and organisms mix and mingle. What may well upset the functioning of a Gaian colony is a pest coming in from Earth. For instance, if it turns out that the only food plant that grows well on Planet X is manioc, and one of its many pests hitches a ride out with a new manioc variety that someone helpfully sends from Earth to increase the food supply, then Planet X could face crop failure and starvation.

The second problem is if colonies start trading with each other. It's not just extraterrestrial microbes, fungi, and other critters moving from colony to colony, it's that colonies are likely to ship out with largely the same repertoire of food plants and animals, simply because people tend to copy what works, rather than building complex new systems from scratch. Over time, pests, parasites, and pathogens are going to evolve to take advantage of these similar complex systems, and if they're passed around from one smallish, semi-closed biosphere to another, then you could see waves of crop failures and the like, analogous (or identical, actually) to the spread of antibiotic resistant diseases on Earth right now.

So yeah, if I wanted to pick the unsung heroes of a space operatic world, I'd stop romanticizing smugglers doing the Kessel Run and start looking at the inspectors and everyone else trying to keep stuff from falling apart.

156:

just an append-only log file

Back in the early days of CD drives, when 20 MB was a big hard disk, there was talk of using a CD writer as a hard drive that would provide an audit trail of changes to documents. I don't think anything came of the plan (or if it did it obviously wasn't commercially successful).

157:

(Yes, off topic (and topic is interesting) so keeping it short) Consider an extreme case - a recumbent bike - despite claims, they are extremely visible to anyone who is actually looking - or a cyclist who has already taken a spill. Agree with the point, but recumbent bikes and fallen pedestrians are likely to be in the training and test sets. (OK IMO) More like a wave of snow that resembles a giant polar bear, or artwork (e.g. psychedelic) on the side of a van that messes up the visual object classification system, or similar deliberate/malicious attacks. Deliberate could just mean selfish, e.g. for many human drivers a car following them that looks or behaves like a police vehicle will cause them to slow down and shift lanes. A grey market "deflector beam" modification for autonomous vehicles would be exist if it were possible. (Real-time negotiation would quickly become rather vile, particularly if black(red?) markets/cryptocurrencies were involved.) A roundabout that captures naive autonomous vehicles would be fun. Round and round they go, until one runs out of fuel/charge. :-)

158:

But this predates the availability of credit: money was a tool for keeping track of food in this model. It took a lot of iterations and generalizations for loans, banking, and credit to show up, and I'm not sure the libertarians ever really understood how complicated it's all become: they don't generally seem good at handling abstractions, even though they fetishize one (liberty).

According to Graeber (and I have no reason to doubt him on this), credit long predated cash. He sees debt as a fundamental part of human relationships. For example, what would happen if a parent demanded you pay off all the costs of being born and raised by them? You could do that, but paying that debt would end the relationship.

Bronze age civilization ran entirely on credit, backed to some degree (per Graeber) by lumps of precious stuff stuck in temples. This is where a lot of the language about things like honor come from. A fairly simple civilization that runs entirely on credit needs to have people who will place honoring their debts above all else. Cash came along well into the Iron Age, when it became popular for invaders to loot temples and turn those lumps of silver and gold into coins to things more like coins to be used as Charlie above.

I'd even note that money, both the cash we're used to and archaic forms like ornaments, have a proof-of-work in them. They're composed of stuff that's hard to make and/or obtain, and that's one thing that makes them valuable. I don't think much of creating specialized computers to mine bitcoin, but the idea of proof-of-work has been implicitly in any form of exchange pretty much since the beginning.

159:

Since the question pops up wether bc is money (ok, on here not really), one interpreatation - bc is fictious capital & it's value, like many other assets is basically what the owner hopes to get at a later time. A good primer on the idea that helped me understand a few things a few years back was this: "Once Again, On Fictitious Capital".

I would view the current coin bubble as, among other things, a sign of the fact that there's (compared to other times in the past) less of a profit to be had in the real economy. So we have all kinds of speculations on bubbles (housing wold be another one, in certain areas of the world). It's one of the tenets of marxist political economy that these crises happen inevitably once in a while, and are either resolved by absorbing new value or by destroying capiatl - not that anyone thinks "hmm, with a war or two, we should rekindle a nice boom phase" *twirls mustache, but that how it often turned out.

So I'm with the second scenario in Charlies OP - it'S a bubble and it will burst sooner or later. The smart (=big) money should know this and should try to offload their bc on some rubes - a mix of ordinary investors (who hope to save their retirement from inflation/rising costs of living?) and the various Nazis, Libertarians and others who are drawn to *coin for more ideological reasons.

160:

One of the big problems with automatic XXX-recognition is doing so when the XXX is in an unusual state. People unable to login because they have fallen over or been beaten up and their face is swollen is one example. I am not sanguine that a sufficient range of unusual states of unusual modes of progress will be in the training set. My moniker does end in 'cynic', after all :-)

161:

I have. The established theories are different, which indicates that there are at least multiple viewpoints. The second is that at least some pre-'government' societies used things as barter objects. Consider Fred the farmer, who wants to buy a cow from a neighbouring village, but has only bulky and heavy roots and fruit to sell. He swaps some with his flint-knapper for some axe-heads or spear points, carries those to the neighbouring village, trades for the cow, and comes back with it. Simples.

Is that how it started? Dunno. But it's sure as eggs is little chickens plausible.

162:

The IBM 3330 was introduced in 1970 with a capacity of 200 MB. CD-ROMs were not introduced until 1984. What you say is true, but the reason is that CD-ROMs had a much higher capacity for a given volume or weight than hard disks, not that they were bigger.

163:

IIRGC*, his criticism of the established theories you mention is that anthropologists found no such barter systems among tribal socieites. Also no direct historic evidence of these barter systems.

*If I recall Graeber correctly

164:

CD-ROMS could be mass-produced, the same way CDs and LPs are -- by stamping. (I was indirectly involved in a company that crossed the threshold from "low-enough volume to justify recording our own CD-ROMs" to "high-enough volume to justify sending a master tape out and producing thousands of them at once.")

165:

Yes, but that's different. Look at #156 for the context.

166:

Ok, my take on BTC and all the rest: the bs about "keeping government out of it" are codewords, just like, in the US, "states' rights" are codewords for outright racism. What they really indicate is a way to hide your money, a fancy-schmancy version of offshore credit hideouts, to AVOID PAYING TAXES. Period.

Show me one person who's into cryptocurrency who's willing to pay taxes, and sees them for what they buy (via the gov't) as opposed to "THEFT BY DE GUMMINT!!!". For that matter, I'd bet that at least 80% of everyone into cryptocurrency is self-incorporated, and complains about "double taxation", not understanding that their incorporated company is an artificial person that's being taxed, rather than they, personally, are being taxed twice.

No one likes paying taxes, but thank you, I like my infrastructure, and want to provide a safe3ty net for those under the poverty line. I believe in living in a society*... which is why I'm a socialist.

  • Libertarians, as far as I can tell, think they live in some imaginary primeval plain, and stand or fall by their own efforts....

Also, there were left-wing libertarians - I have a booklet, somewhere, that I inherited from my father, from 1950 or so.

167:

Others have claimed they had found such systems. Whether or not they had, long-distance trading was widespread long before the establishments of 'governments' (i.e. in the neolithic). I haven't a clue how that worked, but can't imagine a way that it can without some kind of portable valuable.

168:

John Galt. A character, created by a terrible writer, who spends 60 or 90 pages giving a speech.

Right.

And, as some folks like to point out, she lived her last years on social security and Medicare. (SOCIALISM!!!)

But let's look back: from what I read, she used a guy to get her to the US, then dumped him, and continued on that path. Real "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". And then, let's notice she started writing in the thirties... gosh, I wonder what other -isms were on the upswing then?. And my reading of Hitler was always that the wealthy wanted a pseudo-populist to control the masses, who might otherwise turn on them. Libertarianism feeds that same strain: "don't work together, the others are holding you back", which leads to "the only reason I'm not rich is that my 80-hr weeks aren't long enough". The result is Stockholm Syndrome, where they identify with the wealthy, and imagine they are or will be... and are blind to their actual situation and how they got there.

It's a secular (and sometimes not-so-secular) version of the way religion, esp. Christianity, has been used for over 1500 years, to control the populace, and put down dissent.

169:

That's one thing that Graeber does deal with, the notion that coins replaced barter for day-to-day commodities. There's not a lot of evidence for this ever happening, it was apparently a just-so story cooked up in the 19th-20th centuries. It seems logical to us, but generally barter turns up in cash societies among people who are strapped for cash.

The counterexample is people having IOUs and running up bar tabs, paying them off when they have the money or an equivalent. This can be extended to a farmer making a deal with a potter to get some pots to hold his grain harvest when it comes in. In return for the pots, the potter gets a share of the harvest (presumably in one of his own pots). That's a credit system, not a barter system, and it allows for useful deals that don't depend on someone having something to trade immediately.

Getting back to an earlier topic, credit is apparently how the Inkan empire ran, based on a study of a very traditional village. The "family corporations" (ayllus) that made up the village kept tabs on who got and gave away what, in terms of crops, labor, wool, whatever. Up until around 1900, they did it using knots on their sets of khipus. From 1900 to the present, the used paper. In any case, they'd get all indebted to each other, within and across ayllus, then once or twice a year they'd take a day to literally settle accounts, figure out who owed what to whom, and finally, once every exchange had been cancelled out, then might something like money or some other valuable get exchanged to pay off some debt that hadn't been fully settled.

In a community where people are going to have long-term relationships, these kinds of credit-based debt relationships work great. They can be "monetized" by having the debts accounted for in the local currency (whether or not anybody has any of it is beside the point, it's an accounting unit), or not, if they use standardized exchange conversions (the idea that a large basket of yams is worth a medium-sized pig by fiat, for example, or a day's work is worth a day's food or its equivalent).

Barter's a bit too limited to handle all this. Certainly people do and did barter, but it's something that you do with strangers, a straight exchange at one point in time, done with someone whose reputation and accountability are not known.

170:

Knowledge works equally well as a portable valuable. Check out Lynne Kelly's Memory Code.

171:

On-topic, very short news piece: Fed not developing digital currency, Williams says The Federal Reserve does not have plans to issue digital currency, but the U.S. central bank is interested in the underlying technology and is actively researching it, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said on Wednesday Does anyone here have an understanding (or a link) of how a government-controlled cryptocurrency might work?

172:

A pretty important secondary effect of the bitcoin runup that seems to be overlooked is there is now a large passle if semi lunatic crypto fanatics that have just become tremendously wealthy

I wonder what in the world they are going to do with their billions ?

I wonder what they are going to fund

173:

Oh, yes, and the other use for cryptocurrency is for crime. Every ransomware that I'm aware of, for example, wants payment in untraceable BTC.

174:

Short on details, but looks like Dubai is state sponsoring a crypto currency and China is considering it.

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/dubai-launches-worlds-first-state-cryptocurrency/38737/

175:

Now Just One MInute: you're suggesting that the Culture Minds have nothing in common with our Lords & Masters. I suspect a close relationship, actually, given that the Internet was invented for cute cat pictures....

176:

Yes! I have zillions in cryptocurrency!

Yeah? And how are you going to pay me for the corn?, asks the guy who brought it up in the pickup powered by home-brew biodiesel, with no Internet....

177:

Wait, you mean I should be expecting that any day now? But that's a lot older, and I'm still waiting for my check from the Kremlin for all my protesting in the sixties....

178:

Isn't credit just negative abstract money? Maybe gifts, with status and relationship implications, were the first kind of economic exchange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch Parent child relationships and bartering could be subsets and variants on the basic socially meaningful gift. Like debt and cash for that matter. If so, cash is an upgrade. Potlatches (like Christmas and birthday obligatory gift exchanges) were wasteful.

179:

Hey, here's a science fiction scheme, science fictional because I don't do economics and this looks not-quite-batshit to me.

You need something like a blockchain as the equivalent of a notarized ledger at the spaceport, to make sure that everything going in and out is what it says it is. You also probably should blockchain the discoveries of your survey teams, so that you have some record of where stuff like microbes comes from when it starts chewing on people's crotches or whatever. The point here is to have trustworthy records on a world where people are moving around, coming in, and they're not all known to each other.

So you have, well, miners is a sucktastic term, but you do have computers doing the hashing, verification, and storage. They may be hired on, or they may be run by whatever passes for local government. In any case, society owes them a debt for their critical work. That debt can be monetized, and spent around the colony on whatever, like for the salaries of the inspectors, surveyors, and IT crew.

Note that I'm not (necessarily) talking about a cryptocurrency, merely monetizing the debt owed to a critical piece of the colony that otherwise makes no money. Similar schemes here could monetize the debt owed to first responders as a way to pay them. Other debt-based currencies seem to run more on war debt, and I'm wondering in my naive way whether this kind of debt can be rejiggered to cover social costs.

180:

Yes, it does, but it isn't really plausible for all of the neolithic long-distance trading. Basically, I don't have a clue, except that I doubt any explanation that posits that the establishment of 'governments' (probably in the bronze age) was a prerequisite. Neolithic society was just too advanced to work without SOME such mechanism.

181:

Go read that book I referenced if you want another, fairly reasonable, theory of how it all worked. Seriously.

182:

Then there's the semantic drift of "liberal". Liberalism (classical, Adam Smithish) long ago split between the Bastiat branch which became those who now call themselves "libertarians" and the Mill branch which eventually evolved into social liberals (who see private oppression as just as much a hindrance to liberty as public oppression, basically progressive lite), not to be confused with the overlapping set of social liberals (who are for a liberal rather than conservative approach to social and cultural matters such as race and sex) not to be confused with the overlapping set of social liberals (barely at all left center left, social democrat lite). All should be able to make the argument that their north star is liberty, they just have different ideas of how to optimize it.

183:

Apologies. I meant personal computer hard disks, not mainframes. My fault for not specifying.

(And I'm implicitly assuming the North American market, because that's where I was working then. Europe might have been different.)

184:

Something that makes me despair about most 'sciences' (including much of modern physics, incidentally) is that the requirements for a theory to be 'proved' are merely that (a) it is vaguely plausible and (b) it wins out politically. That doesn't constitute what any rigorous thinker would regard as proof.

In this sort of area, plausible theories are two a penny. Most of them have plausible counter-arguments, too. Convincing evidence is what is in really short supply.

185:

Or you can just read the Wikipedia article if you are (as I am) somewhat sceptical of investing the time in reading books that claim to “unlock the secrets of the ancients and the hidden powers of the human mind”

In general her theory seems to be “Stonehenge is a kind of physical memory palace “. Which seems an interesting if unprovable theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Kelly_(science_writer)

186:

Heteromeles objected to my suggestion of incompatible biochemistries: "One red herring is the whole amino acids thing. A lot of organisms synthesize amino acids."

Ah, but you're assuming the alien organisms synthesize the same amino acids that we require. There's no guarantee alien life forms will do that; in fact, it may be implausible to expect that they will. For example, we depend on 20 amino acids for just about every protein we use; that's a small subset from a superset of potentially thousands of amino acids (https://www.astrobio.net/origin-and-evolution-of-life/mapping-amino-acids-to-understand-lifes-origins/).

So could we depend on imported terrestrial organisms? There's also no guarantee that the life forms we depend on (from microbes to plants) can survive in a sufficiently different alien environment with (say) very different soil chemistry. Consider, for example, what happens to the soil microbiome in soils with long-term heavy nitrogen fertilization (many microbes can't survive under those conditions and the bacteria/fungus balance shifts) -- so an alien soil with very high nitrogen would be problematic. As another example, consider that some plant species can't be transplanted between very different soil types; boreal conifers (except maybe pines) won't grow on tropical laterites, and many crops have relatively narrow growing preferences. (Let's not even consider light quality and quantity and its effects on phenology.) So on a planet with significantly different soil or light characteristics, many of our microbes and plants aren't going to do well. Then there are complications related to soil minerals and the inorganic compounds (including simple cations and anions) that they release through weathering.

As you note, it's complex. Really, what it comes down to is this: at what point does an alien environment become sufficiently alien that it can't support Earth-evolved life forms? You lean towards the "it would have to be really, really different" side of the spectrum; I lean towards the "probably not as different as you think" end. The truth will probably end up somewhere in between. That's why I suggested that exploring this topic in some depth would make a great guest blog post -- or three.

Heteromeles also wondered: "Hey, here's a science fiction scheme, science fictional because I don't do economics and this looks not-quite-batshit to me. You need something like a blockchain as the equivalent of a notarized ledger at the spaceport, to make sure that everything going in and out is what it says it is."

As I noted earlier, there's a huge problem with this: How do you know it "is what it says it is"? Through a notarized ledger created by people who inspect the goods to confirm this... thereby eliminating the need for blockchain. (Throwing technology at a solved problem doesn't always produce a better solution.) Simply ship a copy of the appropriate page from the notarized ledger (or its electronic equivalent) along with the cargo.

Your suggestion is primarily science fictional because it assumes that everyone is honest, accurate, diligent at their work, well-trained, and unbribable, and that no criminals exist (who can alter the contents of a shipping container after they've been notarized) and no Ayn Rand capitalists ("I only care about me; the rest of you can go hang") exist. Economics used to make the same mistake by relying on the flawed assumption that analyses could be based on Homo economicus, the consistently economically rational human being. It's not an unreasonable simplifying assumption, but it's patently unrealistic in real-world applications.

187:

Elderly Cynic notes: "Something that makes me despair about most 'sciences' (including much of modern physics, incidentally) is that the requirements for a theory to be 'proved' are merely that (a) it is vaguely plausible and (b) it wins out politically. That doesn't constitute what any rigorous thinker would regard as proof."

As for (a), I'm not confident you're correct to despair. Most sciences -- and particularly the "hard" sciences like physics -- require a high standard of proof for anything that's formally described as a theory. You're right, however, that language has changed such that many scientists use "theorize" when what they really mean is "hypothesize" (i.e., propose a testable explanation based on the available evidence). Replace their "theory" with "working hypothesis" and the description is usually correct. There are some scientists who try to get away with proclaiming a theory based on scant evidence; they're usually quickly shot down by their peers.

As for (b), you need to be more specific about how you mean "politically". It's always been the case that the powers (politicians) can control what aspects of science are allowed to be spoken of in public -- and that's been true from Lysenko to Trump. If you're referring more to the central dogma of any given science, which can become highly politicized among scientists, you're only partially correct. Most sciences are conservative in the good sense of the word: they require a high standard of proof to overturn what time and repeated tests have demonstrated to be a good description of reality (i.e., the central dogma). When faced with enough strong evidence that the central dogma is wrong or incomplete, it gets replaced with a new dogma (e.g., from Newton to Enstein).

188:

Have you considered the possibility that it may not be wise to blow even more wind into the sails of said ship

Have you considered maybe not teaching your grandfather to suck eggs?

Seriously, I've been aware of — and thinking about — such issues for a few decades now. (And writing books about them.)

189:

Oh you sad person, you are so missing out. Since I've read that book and a lot of books on Stonehenge, I'd take this one quite seriously.

Here's the fun thing about the book. She started with what existing cultures (like the Australian Aboriginals, some of whom did have standing stones), learned how they created memory palaces, abstracted ten design principles, found them in Stonehenge first, asked the leading Stonehenge archaeologists if there was any problem with her research to that point, received information that there was no problem with her interpretation, and that it should be taken seriously, and went on from there.

In other words, she's working with the archaeological community. This isn't a book (like, say, Hot Earth Dreams) that's written by a dilettante, Memory Code is the pop-sci version of her PhD thesis. The only reason I'm not recommending her thesis (also in print) is that it's effing expensive. I checked out a copy, and it's even better.

She's also not just a historian of memory palaces, but someone who practices them. One of her personal criteria is that something has to work as a mnemonic device for her or others she knows in order for her to describe it as a mnemonic device.

One fault is that she's a bit shy of describing how she uses things as mnemonic devices, but she apparently has a book contract to do that, hopefully we'll get the details in 2019.

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190:

Oh lordie. I only minored in soil biology, but that's not where you want to go. Soil's about as alien an environment as you can find near the surface of the Earth, where you can go from an oxygen-based ecosystem to a hydrogen-based anoxic ecosystem in a few centimeters, and researchers seriously ask questions like, "how few water molecules can there be and it's still an aquatic ecosystem for microbes." It's not worth going there.

As for alien amino acids, I think you're both right and wrong. Ol' Isaac Asimov made this point back in the 1960s, and I think it still stands, that it takes energy and resources to assemble things like amino acids, and they're not interchangeable. You have to look at things like how stable they are, how versatile they are, how much energy it costs to make them, and so forth. When you run that list, AFAIK the amino acids found on Earth are pretty versatile and pretty cheap. Could alien life use others? Of course, but I'd expect at least a partial overlap, simply on cost-efficiency grounds.

Anyway, if I wanted to deal with alien soil, I'd cook it (slash and burn might be one way), mix it with lots of Gaian compost, and keep doing that until I had enough soil to establish a Gaian ecosystem. If the soil biota were really problematic, I'd use something like the giant autoclave I used doing my PhD experiments, that sterilized about a ton of soil at a time and was big enough to step into (about 4 feet tall and 12 feet long, as I remember). It's not energy efficient, but if you've made your way to an alien world, I suspect that energy efficiency is not your primary issue.

Light and seasons now, that's where things get fun. Soil is fun too, quite honestly, and I'd suggest that colonizing a planet that naturally experienced a lot of fires would be more difficult than one where humans could burn the heck out of it. Fire has been our ally in transforming landscapes for probably 40,000 years or more. As long as the atmosphere of a planet is more than ~16% oxygen, there's no reason we can't go play xenoarsonist on another world too.

191:

Your suggestion is primarily science fictional because it assumes that everyone is honest, accurate, diligent at their work, well-trained, and unbribable, and that no criminals exist (who can alter the contents of a shipping container after they've been notarized) and no Ayn Rand capitalists ("I only care about me; the rest of you can go hang") exist. Economics used to make the same mistake by relying on the flawed assumption that analyses could be based on Homo economicus, the consistently economically rational human being. It's not an unreasonable simplifying assumption, but it's patently unrealistic in real-world applications.

Um, not quite, but I read one of your comments distracted, so fair's fair.

I'm more suggesting that you might be able to monetize the debt racked up by supporting an inspection system, and that part of this debt could be generated by something hashing the ledgers in order to make them more tamper resistant. Rewriting a bill of lading is so trivial with computer technology that I could do it. Of course people can be corrupted, but show me one monetary system that isn't infected with corruption. Monetizing the debt owed to first responders, bureaucrats, and their equivalents hasn't, to my knowledge, been tried as a form of cash, but I can't think of a reason (other than small supply) why it wouldn't work. It's certainly less problematic than tried-and-true methods like war debts.

192:

Perhaps I'm thick, but how exactly is "monetizing the debt racked up" different from "paying them for doing it"?

193:

An example. Say you give an IOU for $100. If I want to get something worth, say, $100, I write something on that IOU you gave me to the effect that I gave it to this other person, who can do the same. That IOU has just become worth $100, and so long as everyone believes it will be honored, it can circulate as a $100 bill until it wears out.

One way this worked was (from Graeber) that in 1694, a bunch of London and Edinburgh merchants collectively loaned William III 1.2 million pounds to help finance his war with France, in return for allowing them to form a corporation that held a monopoly on the creation of bank notes. This gave them the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king owed them to any citizen who chose to borrow from them, and these debts, formalized as bank notes in standard denominations, came to be circulated as money. Oddly enough, that debt racked up by King William III has never been repaid to the corporation (now known as the Bank of England), and one might argue that the pound would go away as a working form of cash if the British royal family ever repaid their debt in full. The only reason a pound note is valuable is that it's backed by the full faith and credit that the debt it embodies could get paid off.

So if a colony owes somebody for some non-productive task but can't simply give them resources (food, medical care, supplies) to pay off the debt, then those IOUs can by the people paid with them to buy stuff, so long as everyone believes that the IOU can eventually be paid off, whether or not that happens.

194:

OK, but I still have no clue what distinction you are drawing between this and what we already do right now, in real life.

In our current real-life economy, when we say the government "pays" someone, we generally mean it issues them IOUs (in the form of the local currency).

For instance, if the US government hires a bureaucrat, it probably pays them by issuing them US dollars, which are a form of IOU backed by "full faith and credit" in the US government.

But that is presumably NOT what you mean, since you wrote "Monetizing the debt owed to first responders, bureaucrats, and their equivalents hasn't, to my knowledge, been tried as a form of cash."

So how is "monetizing the debt owed to them" different from giving them dollar bills, like we have been doing routinely for centuries?

195:

It's the same as what we do now, in fact, it's (near) the start of the modern system. The thing is, prior to Renaissance, we didn't do it this way, treating standardized IOUs as valuable cash. Cash was, well, cash: coins made of allegedly valuable metals. Debt was normal, but it wasn't in itself considered valuable. Kings would finance their war debts by sacking their opponents, taking their valuables, and using their share of the loot to pay off their creditors.

On thing to realize about Graeber's Debt is that he wrote the book to understand money, and realized that debt was more fundamental, a normal part of human life.

196:

Oh, yes, and the other use for cryptocurrency is for crime. Every ransomware that I'm aware of, for example, wants payment in untraceable BTC.

That's something that bothers me. I try to practice safe computing.

Still, if somehow I did manage to screw up and infect my computer, I have no idea how or where I would get "bitcoin" to pay the ransom?

197:

... and the Mill branch which eventually evolved into social liberals (who see private oppression as just as much a hindrance to liberty as public oppression ...

I guess that's me. I don't see any difference between oppression by a government and oppression by corporations, oligarchs or kleptocrats.

198:
Still, if somehow I did manage to screw up and infect my computer, I have no idea how or where I would get "bitcoin" to pay the ransom?

Don't worry -- organized crime operations are nothing without good customer service, so they provide you with detailed links to fast and efficient ways of sending them your ransom money. In case of difficulty, their quick and attentive customer service reps will be more than happy to guide you through the process via anonymous darknet email relays.

199:

In my limited career in the sciences I never once heard anything described as "proof" or "proven". I heard "disproven" a lot.

"Proof" in physics appears as near as I can tell to be entirely confined to popular press and poor quality outreach. I can't think of a single time I've ever seen the words used in a physics paper.

I don't think it's even a term that has a meaning in physics. You're not thinking of Maths are you? I've seen proofs in Mathematical Physics papers. A quick google scholar of "physics" "Proof" turns up a lot of Mathematical Physics papers and a smattering of computational physics.

201:

Then were you proposing to ban Bitcoin ironically? Like when other people on Twitter call to "kill all men", "destroy capitalism" or "deport the muslims"?

202:

A] Thanks - I'd forgotten about the autonomous-street drone aspect - silly of me. B] Although I'm a cyclist I am not a "cyclist" if you see what I mean, & cyclists are not going to be vulnerable to autonomous vehicles, because most of them are made of metal & have lots of angles & corners, thus reflecting radar/lidar very well, including recumbents. It's soft, curvy, non-reflecting pedestrians who are going to be most at risk, I'm afraid.

203:

I suspect that the odds of completely compatible amino acids are very low

REALLY?

I thought that there were only 22 amino acids, at all. And that Carbon-based life-forms would therefore have to use those 22, even if their genetic-equivalent material is totally incompatible with Earth's DNA/RNA bases

204:

Also, there were left-wing libertarians Ever heard of Kropotkin ???

205:

AND The first "governor" of the Bank of England was one John Houblon Who had been, an Hugenout refugee from Lille ...

206:

No, there are a lot more than 22 amino acids - Wikipedia says 'over 500'. I suspect that our selection of biological amino acids has something to do with how easy they are to make and how useful they are, so I think extraterrestrial life which coms from a relatively close environment chemically would use many of the same amino acids. This is because the same chemistry works and the same things would be easy to make and would perform the same functions.

207:

(Also to gasdive) Unfortunately, that's only how it seems if you don't look at it too closely :-(

Let's take a fairly extreme example, for clarity: cosmology. Pretty well everything is based on Einstein's formula being sacrosanct - not just valid up to and beyond its singularities but also being the Final Prophecy. Take Hubble's hypothesis - it's not the only plausible theory, and the ONLY proofs are by consistency, but that means the others don't get seriously considered. Or black holes and gravitational waves - the proofs of their existence depend on assuming the perfection of the formula that they are used in support of! Note that 'dark matter/energy' is nothing more than a finagle factor being used to prop up the established theory.

Or anthropology, and the savanna hunter theory that will not die, no matter HOW many times it is debunked :-( Note that I am talking about the phase when we converted from a brachiating quadruped to an obligative biped.

Medicine and related areas are even worse, of course.

208:

I am a OCD observer, keen gardener and mad composter, and notice the interesting variations within incredibly short distances in soil and compost heaps, and between the same soil in the ground and in pots. You don't need more than to look, carefully, to realise that it is going to make human biochemistry look simple :-)

209:

That's FAR too simplistic. I know something about the 'training' methods used, and their failure modes, which is why I say what I do. Drivers often run into cyclists because they do not allow for the speed of cyclists, and the way that cycles move, and it is those aspects which are likely to cause the trouble. In particular, it's going to be the behaviour which occurs (say) 1% of the time under 0.1% of the circumstances. I have been run into by other cyclists for exactly that reason (though the probabilities were higher in those cases). And note that recumbents move differently from upright cyclists.

210:

If I find a cheap copy of her book, or can get hold of her thesis, I may look at it, but "unlocking the secrets of Stonehenge" is hardwired into my bullshit detector - which I got from my stepfather, who was a leading Wiltshire archaeologist and friends with all the obvious suspects! Essentially for the reason I gave - a plausible explanation is not a proof, and we know that the truth is not and cannot be simple because of the inherent complexity of the project.

But it's irrelevant for the purposes I was talking about, anyway. Trading information, yes, but information is simply NOT suitable for a trading token (a.k.a. proto-money). Inter alia, consider someone with a pack pony crossing the channel. If his goods were near-universally useful, he could barter, but that's not always the case - and then there is the Channel crossing, where the boatmen might well say "we have more pottery than we need - - you can damn well swim". Remember that there was enough long-distance neolithic trade to create actual roads and for a lot of artifacts etc. to be found hundreds of miles from their origin.

211:

First off, I know enough about blockchain databases to know that I don't know enough about them to comment meaningfully. So I won't, but I am starting to learn more about them.

You may find me in other strands of this thread that I do know something about.

212:

Really, what it comes down to is this: at what point does an alien environment become sufficiently alien that it can't support Earth-evolved life forms?

My current preferred solution to this problem (space opera on hold pending time to rework it): from the top down — the basic organic molecular building blocks are more or less ubiquitous and have similar chirality thanks to bottom-up astrophysics/chemistry. Specifics like ribosomes and the codon sequences they map to transfer RNAs are much more variable, so while alien biochemistries follow similar-ish rules they're mostly incompatible.

So the usual solution for human (or rather, hominid) visitors is to rely on cooking, and some very heavily tailored gut microfauna/microflora to break down the weird-ass local polysaccharides and polypeptides, plus artificial dietary supplements. Permanent colonists require a whole lot more modification, of course, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution: for any given subspecies visiting any given survivable biosphere there's a brisk bowel prep followed by whole raft of customized bugs delivered via fecal transplant — and it only works about 50% of the time; the other 50% of worlds are different enough that you'd need to bring a packed lunch and wear protective gear to avoid becoming lunch for the local equivalent of damp rot.

213:

Sorry Greg, that's only even potentially correct if you presume that self-driving vehicles must be part of the "internet of things".

214:

Extend my existing proposal for the candidate group for pedestrian detection systems testing to make them the (recumbent) cyclists test group as well?

215:

No irony intended whatsoever. But it's easier to nuke Bitcoin by stopping merchants who accept it from laundering the proceeds into the official currency system than it is by policing every potential user's personal computer or web browser.

Remember, money is only useful if other people accept it. Companies exist within a legal framework; if the legal framework forbids them from handling BTC — and provides for auditing, and penalties if they're caught out — then the vast majority won't use it, and its utility to the public will decline drastically, making it less attractive.

216:

With the note that I actually enjoy driving; what I do not enjoy is sharing the roads with people who neither enjoy driving nor seem to care how their actions may impact on other road users.

The only effect a Police vehicle tends to have on my driving is to make me more careful about checking my speed whilst we're mutually visible. I'm one of the people who actually enjoys passing a "battenburg" at the ruling speed limit on a dual carriageway, whilst mentally "pointing and laughing at the Audiots who've fallen in behind it". Also I've actually accelerated hard past a marked Police vehicle on dual track, and the only reaction from the driver was a wave of approval when I kept accelerating until past, and then released the throttle when I returned to the left lane.

217:

True this - Witness the varying levels of utility against time of the Scottish clearing banks bills of exchange as money when visiting England (and even even varying levels of utility within England).

218:

Charlie, what are you trying to ban? The specific instance of crypto-currency known as Bitcoin (which can be forked extremely easy - see the hundreds of altcoins)? Or the general idea of people using blockchain as a distributed ledger?

219:

The specific deflationary goldbug-esque Bitcoin currency that seems to have been designed by a climate change denier.

We'll deal with other cryptocurrencies on an ad-hoc basis if they warrant it, but BTC is basically a Ponzi scheme with a toxic underlying political agenda that's turning into a magnet for the bad crazy. (Here's a hint: I view libertarianism — the US political ideology — as "the bad crazy", more tolerable than nazism only because it hasn't yet been given the power to build its own pyramids of skulls.)

220:

cyclists are not going to be vulnerable to autonomous vehicles

As long as the vehicles have fast reflexes and use something other than visible light sensors…

Yes, I'm being facetious. I've just had yet another near miss with a cyclist clad in high-visibility charcoal grey* weaving between road and pavement (and moving vehicles), secure in his belief that traffic signals and laws** don't apply to him.

At least I'm awake now, with an elevated heart rate :-/

*Possibly taking his lead from the Toronto Police Chief, who decided that dark grey with a white stripe was the best colour for patrol cars.

**Both traffic and physics. No bloody way I could have stopped in time if he'd fallen while cutting in front of me — my only choices would have been veering into oncoming traffic or hitting a parked car and hoping that I didn't knock it into the pedestrians on the pavement. Or running over him, I suppose.

221:

I view libertarianism — the US political ideology — as "the bad crazy", more tolerable than nazism only because it hasn't yet been given the power to build its own pyramids of skulls.

I'd argue for the Irish Famine, the transatlantic slave trade, and the conquests of the East India Company as pyramids of skulls for libertarianism, though those certainly aren't the only examples.

222:

The thesis itself is available from La Trobe University as a pdf at no charge.

223:

How does one get it? I've searched, but the only link I could find keeps returning "access denied - try again later" messages.

224:

Yes - it's a bit of a mess. The first one I found demanded that I sign in, and then failed to do so. But this works:

https://roundedglobe.com/books/86f326a9-2344-4d95-a3cc-199c82b3a0b6/Grounded:%20Indigenous%20Knowing%20in%20a%20Concrete%20Reality/

225:

Heteromeles, I also minored in soil ecology G, but probably didn't get as advanced in my study as you did with your doctorate. Yes, you could terraform even a hostile alien soil with enough energy and Terrran compost. But it wouldn't be easy, and success isn't guaranteed. Barring very advanced tech, you'd be working on very small areas of soil to begin with, and propagules (spores etc.) of all kinds of alien organisms would keep drifting in and trying to overwhelm your Terran organisms. You could build greenhouses to exclude that problem, but it's an expensive and fragile solution.

Charlie's comments on biochemistry are bang on (no surprise). About the only quibble is about chirality of molecules; last I looked into this, we mostly didn't know why one chirality is preferred over another, since the two forms are usually equally likely based on thermodynamics. The notion of fecal transplants of tailored organisms is likely to be a really good solution. I can easily see "space tourists" getting these inoculations the same way we now get vaccines before traveling to certain countries. The technology's a ways off, but by the time we get to other stars, it should be in place.

Good point about the thermodynamics of amino acids. Our 20 represent a demonstrably energy-efficient solution. Without a fair bit of experimentation with alternatives, it's hard to say whether other "alphabets" are equally viable. I lean in the direction of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations", subject to thermodynamics (and applied thermodynamics, which is chemistry). There have been some early experiments that demonstrate synthetic DNA (made from outside our set of 20 amino acids), but I haven't followed them to see whether the macromolecules are viable (i.e., can stably reproduce both themselves and a functional set of proteins).

Heteromeles noted: "I'm more suggesting that you might be able to monetize the debt racked up by supporting an inspection system, and that part of this debt could be generated by something hashing the ledgers in order to make them more tamper resistant. Rewriting a bill of lading is so trivial with computer technology that I could do it."

Fully agree with your revised description, with the footnote that resistance to tampering depends on both the sophistication of the "signing" technology and that of the criminals. Paper and PDF is easy to fake; public-key-encrypted documents and physical holograms less so. (Which is why, for example, Canadian currency contains holographic "proof" of validity that thus far hasn't been forged. It will be, just hasn't been done yet.)

Greg Tingey wondered: "thought that there were only 22 amino acids, at all."

No, many, many more. However, some that are "possible" are unlikely (see above re. thermodynamics).

Elderly Cynic noted cosmology as an example of "unproven" theories. Yes, and no. Yes, in the sense that astrophysicists tend to use "theory" sloppily when what they really mean is "working model supported by considerable evidence" or "here's my guess at something we can now start accumulating evidence for or against". No, because most would not call their "theory" proven until it has been rigorously tested. I definitely agree with you re. the arrogance of assuming that Einstein represents the "end of physics". Einstein will eventually be replaced the same way Newton was, and our current models of the universe will be seen as "quaint". Whether this happens tomorrow or in 500 years? Who knows?

226:

Returning somewhat reluctantly to the original subject of this blog entry after some cool diversions... G

What fascinates me about money is just how slippery it becomes when you try to look closely. (Not quite Schrödinger, but headed in that direction.)

So long as a currency is stable, we all agree to accept the government-sanctioned face value of its tangible representation (e.g., a $100 bill) as our consensus objective reality. Where things get weird is when you try to exchange that nominally consistent and objective value for a good or service. Say I buy a good in late October for $100, but my wife buys two copies of the identical good on Black Friday for $100. Has the currency value appreciated by 100% within 1 month? Not in a society-wide sense, but clearly yes in this limited sense of our relative buying power. The symbol remains the same; its meaning changes.

Note that I fully understand the economics of discount pricing. My only and specific point is that the practical meaning (2 goods instead of 1) changes dramatically without the consensus value of $100 changing.

Similarly, consider the value of that same $100 to a homeless person living on the street, vs. to a millionnaire or billionnaire. The objective society-wide consensus value of $100 does not change, but takes on a radically different subjective meaning.

Both examples of monetary weirdness seem to have a clear relationship to bitcoins: the same (meta)physical unit (BTC) has very different meanings depending on time and context. There are differences, of course, such as the fact that BTC values in dollars fluctuate widely. But the similarities strike me as interesting.

227:

Amino acids come in stereo-isomers, so there is a left handed and right handed version of each. Most terrestrial life uses the left-handed isomer. If you remember the trytophan scare (and ban in the US in 1990), the cause was that the largest supplier in the world changed their filtering mechanism and they no longer filtered out the right-handed isomer. The right handed isomer caused a flu-like illness and a number of deaths.

I seem to remember that some antibiotics work by producing right handed amino acids which poison bacteria.

228:
But it's irrelevant for the purposes I was talking about, anyway. Trading information, yes, but information is simply NOT suitable for a trading token (a.k.a. proto-money).

Hawala - which appears to have been in use in the Indian Ocean trade in the 8th century - needs no government, no denominated store of value, no money. It requires communications and a willingness to take on debt.

229:

Ah an "invisicyclist" - far too many iof them around ....

230:

Oh dear ... Someone else who doesn't realise that the only countroes in Europe that didn't have actual famine in 1847-8 were England & Belgium ..... Though I admit that the prevailing politic-economic theories at the time made a bad situation (much) worse.

231:

@Greg Tingey Though I admit that the prevailing politic-economic theories at the time made a bad situation (much) worse.

This was, in fact, my entire point.

232:

Yeah, I wonder why England didn't have a famine in 1847. Can't possibly think of an explanation. Your smugness is disgusting.

233:

Er, no. It doesn't involve the PHYSICAL transfer of money, but it critically relies on the EXISTENCE of money. The era being discussed is the neolithic, before the concept of money as we know it was invented.

On this matter, I have just read Lynne Kelly's essay. Very interesting and, if she writes a book on how to apply those methods, I would like a copy - it would be interesting to see if it helps with my aging memory :-) But it has nothing relevant to say about trade and the origin of money.

234:

I was originally suggesting information as a trade good, not as a form of hawala. I'm more thinking of the Amesbury archer, who, according to isotopic analysis, was born in the Alps and died near Stonehenge around 2300 BCE. We'll never know his story (that being the nature of old stories), but sharing his knowledge is one thing that might have made him locally welcome.

As for knowledge as a trade good, I do know of cases in the anthropological literature, both in California and in Australia, where whole sets of rituals were deliberately bought and sold. That's the kind of thing I'm thinking of. If you want modern examples, everyone from professors to martial arts instructors makes their living from passing on information as well as from utilizing it.

235:
It doesn't involve the PHYSICAL transfer of money, but it critically relies on the EXISTENCE of money

What transfer of what is money in the modern incarnation could not be replaced by transfer of goods in a Neolithic one?

236:

That's an essay on part of her work. Her thesis is Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture (Amazon link). Speaking of knowledge being restricted to people willing to pay for it... I was lucky enough to get it through interlibrary loan.

237:

"still waiting for my pay-out"

That shows admirable restraint and judgement, if you didn't exploit the opportunity for a snappy comeback, such as to mimic a Bronx accent, strike a dramatic pose and reply "Hey, ya lookin' at it."

238:

Pretty much my thinking, although I fudged with Nysus and gave goats the fecal transplants and added bacteria and fungi around the plant roots to deal with the conversion of local amino acids to things humans ate. Since this was a nasty, deliberately low-tech world design, if you wanted to travel long distances, you either needed to travel from farm to farm, or you needed to travel with a herd of lactating goats and live off goat's milk and whatever's in your knapsack.

The fudge factor here is that rumens have a lot more complex microbiomes than do human guts. The good side is that this gives a goat more time to have its gut process whatever it was it ate, which suggests that it would be better to alter a ruminant gut to process alien flora and drink their milk, rather than eat the leaves yourself. The bad thing is that, well, complicated ecosystems don't always take kindly to wholesale alterations, goats don't always lactate, and when they do, sometimes chemicals from what they ate make it into the milk. Oh well.

Still, living planets aren't as lethal as, say, Mars, and the presence of a thick, oxygen-containing atmosphere, free water, and plate tectonics and microbial action that have concentrated elements into useful ores makes them a bit more attractive for settlement compared with, say, the Moon, or Ganymede, or Pluto, or possibly even Mars. The biology part is more insidiously problematic, since I know full well how sloppy people are about keeping things clean, but if accidentally leaving a door open won't kill you, an alien biosphere isn't the worst place to live.

239:

Yes, I know, and I agreed that it was a viable trade good in #130. Where I disagreed, and still do, is that it is viable for the sort of trade goods a long-distance trader uses for supplies, transport and other assistance on the way. Inter alia, knowledge can be spent once per location (and is likely to have spread by the next year by being traded on), and it has no value to people who already know something equivalent or are not interested in that area. And yet quite a lot of such trading went on ....

It's like the generally ignored riddle of Stonehenge - how the hell did they organise it, with no settlement larger than a small town (large village by modern standards) and needing a lot of people for a long period over long distances? The neolithic phase is easier, I agree, but implies either that their economic productivity was phenomenally high, or there was cooperation over a wide area WITHOUT any detectable form of centralisation. And it's not the only such site, just the most spectacular.

Arising from a previous thread, I have now read Guns, Germs and Steel and skimmed The Way It Was. The first is OK, but there's far too much "it happened that way, therefore that was inevitable / the only possibility". The second I was unimpressed with, because of the failure to mention the well-known anomalies (like neolithic western Europe). That's relevant, because I see exactly the same here.

240:

Thanks. I have access to that, so will look at it in due course.

241:

Thank you very much (again).

242:

We interrupt your usual neepery to let you know that Bitcoin just lost over 20% of its value in the past day (Reuters). That is all.

243:

What, you doubt that those books "unlock the secrets of the ancients and the hidden powers of the human mind”? Of course they do.

Assuming that the "secrets of the ancients" include "there's a sucker born every minute", and the "hidden powers of the human mind" include "gullibility".

Y'know, I have this great moneymaker, I own this bridge in a northeaster US city, and I just can not get up there to install the tollbooth, so I'll sell it to you....

244:

Not smugness & bollocks, actually. You obviously missed my mention of Belgium, too. Those two countries - notice I didnt say "The rest of GB", I said "England" - some parts of Wales & Scotland were badly hit, though nowhere nearly as much as Ireland ( their potato-monoculture made them especially vulnerable, of course ) England & Belgium had, at that point the most sophisticated & cough "industrialised" agricultural systems on the planet, which is why they were not hit as badly.

245:

Right. And if there's any here who disagree, I suggest you look up the phrases "company town", and "being paid in company scrip", and the bully-boys in the employ of your employer who will be there to object if you try to leave town without "paying off your debts".

Right now, Big Corporate Brother is more dangerous than Big Government Brother, esp. with the right-wing gutting government for the benefit of Big Money.

246:

I see, on slashdot, that a US judge has ordered coinbase to turn over all info on any users who, in the course of the year, have transferred more than $20k.

Now, in the US, if you write a check for $10k or over, the banks are required to hold it for 10 days, and it's reported to the IRS. I see absolutely no reason NOT to do that for cryptocurrencies.

247:

just the most spectacular. Maybe, maybe not. But the Avebury henge, Ring of Brdgar & the Stones of Callanish are all pretty impressive. Geographical situation including long sight-lines & visibility seem to have been v. important for such - one of the bst in that category is Castleriig, close to Keswick

248:

Um, sorry, he was an anarchist. And there is a difference: libertidiots think that they're Lone Predators, who live and die by their own strength and skills, and screw the rest of you.

Anarchists believe in a self-organizing society (y'know, like any sf club you've ever belonged to, or any con you've gone to). And I speak as someone who, twice in my life, has been a dues-paying member of The premier anarchist-syndicalist organization: the Wobblies.

I've gone "back" to socialism, because we need a government that can protect us against the crooks and the ultra-wealthy (or did I just repeat myself?).

249:

So why was so much food imported, then?

250:

I was about to post a pseudo-amusing comment along the lines of Tulips will be Tulips, but a bit of pre-posting research suggests in an amusingly meta way the Tulip Crash never was....

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/

251:

Any time spammers are screaming that something's a sure-fire money-spinner, that's the time to be getting out of it. Gold is only really a refuge for small amounts of capital; it will never become a currency again (and barely qualifies in antiquity; most people used Roman small change once it became available).

With regards politics, you have to understand that the average person is quite like you or I, only on average a bit stupider. Given the great acts of outrageous stupidity I have been known to perform, that's a scary thought. Most people trundle through life barely switching on the full power of their brains, and a good thing too since thinking tends to stop them doing very much else.

So, with the libertarians turned nazis, what i think we might be seeing is people not so much thinking as sliding from one comforting meme-suite to another. Libertarianism generally feels nice, until you realise it means EVERYONE should be free and that means everyone else can out-compete you if they are actually better at things than you are.

On the other hand, if you can round up enough gormless neo-nazis then you can try to assume some sort of socio-economic clique and exclude the people you perceive to be inferior and/or an economic threat. The fact that this sort of thing has never in recorded history actually worked merely demonstrates that this slide from libertarian to nazi isn't a consciously reasoned move, but merely an emotional slide.

Bitcoin is an interesting first stab at a cryptocurrency, but that's all. It has served its purpose, best to let it die quietly now (and for goodness' sakes, sell any you happen to have lying around before they become worthless!).

252:

Bad news for my friend who invested about 200 quid a few months ago.

(Being able to afford it, and admitting it was a high risk, speculative investment. Which is true! Just higher risk than is generally advertised.)

253:

Actually, your friend who invested £200 a few months ago is probably still ahead by about £200; BTC is still way up on where it was as recently as the middle of the year.

On the other hand, the right time to invest £200 was probably 2012 ...

254:

The 3 base DNA codons used by life on earth limit the number of amino acids that could be specified for translation into protein to 64. The usefulness of additional amino acids diminishes as the variety of building blocks needed to build a sufficient variety of proteins out of them. Another limit would be that organisms need a biochemical pathway to synthesize each one. In reality there are a lot of amino acids which are encoded by more than one codon, particularly the third base pair is often ignored, and a few codons are used to mark the end of the protein. 20-22 is apparently chemically expressive enough that organisms have settled on those numbers.

Keep in mind none of this was really set 'first' it all sifted out together with more or less the first thing that worked pretty well sticking. All attributes simultaneously optimized by a very random massively parallel process.

Vastly more amino acids are chemically possible because the 'side chain' can be anything.

There is not much reason to expect a separate life origin to have settled on the same 20-ish amino acids as ours did. I'd expect them to have about 20, and probably to be able to map their 20 roughly onto our 20 in terms of structure. IE this one has a long non-polar side chain, this one is very compact and polar, one exists with such and such kind of chemical group exposed, etc. Maybe some of the smaller ones would actually be exactly the same?

And then one also has to consider non-proteins. The fats, the carbs, the other chemicals we use in small amounts (iron, magnesium, etc). And finally alien microbes or parasites.

So how long could a human survive by eating the food on an alien planet?

I suspect the answer is certainly not long. Might be immediately poisonous. Probably not super likely to be neurotoxin-kills-you-in-minutes. Those toxins are specific. Best case its like you ate a big pile of seaweed and a nylon rope that washed up on the beach a week ago. You might digest some of it, but won't sustain you, and you probably regret trying. Bad news is the native microbes in your gut with the native food can eat it. So lactose intolerance... but for almost all the macromolecules in the food.

Best plan I can think of is to digest it with earth microbes of some sort. Marmite every day. Maybe that would work? Earth microbes might evolve to eat the native life fairly quickly.

With sufficient technology you build pathways into people/symbiotic microbes/nanobots so humans can eat alien life.

Old joke: you are much more likely to have a baby with an oak tree than with a true alien humanoid.

It should be significantly easier for a human to live off of whatever they could scrape from the side of a black smoker deep in earth's ocean than anything on an alien planet.

255:

Well, building Stonehenge isn't as big a riddle as how they built Gobekli Tepe about 8,000 years earlier in Turkey.

It's probably a facet of the same problem, which is why do people raise megaliths. It's pretty much a worldwide pattern, with people still raising small megaliths in Madagascar (there's a neat aside about what a Malagasy archaeologist thinks Stonehenge was used for. He's speaking from personal experience as a member of a megalith-raising society). Kelly's hypothesis (right or wrong, and it doesn't preclude other uses of a place like Stonehenge) is that there's a general pattern:

--Roaming hunter gatherers tend to use the landscape as a mnemonic device by doing things like creating stories, songs, and dances to pass on information, and tying them to "sacred sites" that function as loci or groups of loci under the more modern Memory Palace system. --As populations grow, people start herding animals and doing agriculture, and territory shrinks, some sacred sites become inaccessible. This is a problem, because long term information transmission depends on people going to specific places and doing specific things in order to help remember and to transmit the information to successors. They still have to remember all that information (things like when to plant, when to harvest, what medicines to use, values, history, ad nauseum), but they have to reorganize that knowledge to make it transmissible in a much more confined landscape. --Her solution, which helps to explain megaliths, is that people started building memory palaces, just as Medieval Cathedrals built labyrinths so that pilgrims could walk the labyrinth and have something akin to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Where her work gets interesting is that she came up with a 10 criteria that would make a site usable as a memory palace, so that it is possible to test her theory fits a particular archaeological site or not. Personally, I'm a bit biased towards testable hypotheses.

In essence, a megalith may be a memorable "proof of work," just as a bitcoin is thought to be valuable because you have to work to make one. In theory you can use any rock as a mnemonic device, but if it breaks or gets lost, you're kind of screwed. Having hundreds of people moving big rocks around, whether at Stonehenge, Gobekli Tepe, or Easter Island, is a way to help make the whole thing memorable and to invest everybody in the importance of the site, and big rocks tend to last longer than do small ones. Of course the megaliths can also be used "as a way to commune with the ancestors" (my remembrance of the Malagasy explanation), or as an astronomical observatory for keeping track of the seasons, but neither precludes a megalithic site's use as a place where information could be remembered and selectively transmitted.

256:

The autonomous car/ bicycle thing suggests to me that the first thing cycling organisations will want to do when the government permits self driving cars onto the road, will be to hire or borrow or even buy one and see how well it reacts to dummies falling in front of it. The publicity might be quite useful, assuming the UK hasn't fallen as far into dictatorship as the USA seems determined to just now.

257:

We'll know if we ever get to another biosphere and find out how it works.

My bet is that a lot of stuff will turn out to be comparable, simply because our life started from a random walk and all ended up with one system through a mix of randomness and competition adding to evolution. While I agree that there are likely to be lots of toxic things out there, I wouldn't be surprised to see multicellular land "animals" using cells that are mostly water, breathing oxygen, using iron-based pigments to move oxygen internally, DNA, RNA, some suite of amino acids that overlaps ours (looking at the list of amino acids, I'd expect serine, threonine, glycine, alanine, leucine, and valine to be pretty universal, and that's about a quarter of what we use already), mobile life-forms using fats for energy storage and likely calcium for structural support (because fats save weight and making bones is a good way to use an otherwise excess element), immobile phototrophs to use sugars for energy storage and carbon polymers for structural support (because photosynthesis generates a lot of surplus carbon, and since weight isn't as much an issue for sessile organisms, keeping carbon polymers around as a bulky energy supply works, as does dumping carbon into dead structural support), and so forth. Note that this doesn't make the world safe for humans, but there's a lot that likely will be shared.

The other part is that it's certainly faster to find/engineer/evolve Gaian microbes to digest alien materials than it is to fiddle humans to do the same thing. Because of this, the "first-in" team on an alien planet really should be comprised mostly of really good biochemists, molecular biologists, and microbiologists and mycologists, who can start figuring out what it would take for Gaian life to survive on the new planet and what needs to be fiddled on the Gaian side to make it happen. And to figure out safety protocols too.

258:

Are you sure it will not have the same effect as Russian dashcam videos of people very obviously throwing themselves in front of a car in order to get insurance payment? (They do not get paid, and entire world laughs at them.)

259:

You seem to have misunderstood my point. Yes, Gobekli Tepe could well be a much earlier example, but I am NOT talking about the engineering. The point is that we know a great deal about the British Isles at the time, and it doesn't match up.

In the case of the British Isles, we are pretty certain that there were NO large settlements nor any other signs of centralised organisation - I believe that is much less clear in Turkey. The second point is that the British Isles is a much more marginal environment, and communities were living within a few percent of starvation until well into historic times, which means that the number of people cooperating was necessarily a large factor (possibly 100x) larger than the number actually working on it.

260:

As with you, I'm talking about the organization, not the engineering.

My understanding is that there's no evidence for large settlements anywhere near Gobekli Tepe, although it's such a thoroughly farmed landscape that this doesn't mean much. What it looks like in neolithic England, as in pre-neolithic Turkey (and on Easter Island, for that matter), is that people were carving and moving enormous rocks, even though they were apparently in marginal environments, and in the cases of Turkey and England, they weren't even doing agriculture (Stonehenge people were more into herding, IIRC, but the archeo-Turks were apparently foragers).

The other thing is that the main stone movement took place in a 200 year time window. It's not clear to me whether they moved the 50-odd sarsen stones all at once during this period, or did them in fits and starts and it took over a century to build the whole thing. If it's the latter, that's a lot less work than organizing hundreds of people to build the whole thing at once. The same holds true for Gobekli Tepe.

261:

Amino acids come in chiral forms, left-handed and right-handed (chemistry structural nomenclature here).

Earthly organisms only use the left-handed forms, despite the right-handed ones being chemically (but not structurally) identical. Indeed, a few antibiotics are right-handed versions of amino acids.

An alien biosphere that used even a few right-handed amino acids would be mutually poisonous to Gaian life.

262:

It doesn't really change the puzzle. Even if they did it only after a few years' of good harvests (i.e. when they had the spare resources), what social structure would manage a coherent design over that period? While Turkey's climate was more reliable, the same question applies.

Only Stonehenge I (which had no big stones) was neolithic, and that was the era of the first farming and forest clearance in the British Isles. Foraging always has been infeasible as a way of life in the British Isles.

263:

Not relying on one single clone of potato plant which was completely vulnerable to a few strains of potato blight, and not having a population that had grown to the point that it was living year to year would be another reason. England was not reliant on one food-crop, and was not using the single worst choice of food crop out there, either.

To be extremely blunt, the Irish population was an accident waiting to happen. The Irish Potato Famine was exacerbated by food exports, but would have been bad even if the export system had been reversed and Ireland turned into a net importer of food, financed by English lords beggaring themselves.

Even then, you would only have been putting off the inevitable for a few years; the Irish population would only have carried on expanding until it hit the danger zone again, and sooner or later you'd get another time when there was a strong low pressure system sitting over Ireland just at the right time to transport Phytophthera infestans spores all over that island to clobber that year's potato harvest.

Some disasters are inevitable.

Bitcoin is going to hit the buffers, and collapse. Idiot investors are going to realise that electronic money is merely farts and fantasy unless backed by something, so the spammers will have to go back to flogging bio-active pills.

264:

All right, let's see how well this works.

SFnal premise.

There is an observer-mediated FTL drive, based on a blockchain algorithm that can conduct verified observations of an extremely unlikely remote entanglement, resulting in instantaneous translation to a spacetime location implicit in the collapsing wave function. The translations are in random directions; but the blockchain's algorithm only notices the ones that go in the desired direction.

The drive thus falls into the venerable class of microjump FTL prior art.

The blockchain is the drive, and the drive is the blockchain. OK?

Short story title: The Velocity of Money.

I hereby release this compelling imaginative concept into the public domain. I couldn't possibly monetize it.

265:

Re: 'The Velocity of Money'

Glad someone mentioned 'velocity'. Seems to me that the most concrete/measurable aspect of these currencies is their velocity/turn-over. Profits are being made by constant churn rather than by 'savings' or production. Very self-referential and self-reinforcing. (Smells like the IPO market minus any stocks.) Agree that cryptocurrency seepage into the regular money supply would create havoc unless someone figures out some kind of 'discounting' scheme based on the same rationale as cashing in bonds before their maturity date. If this happens, then ancillary markets could be created aka 'crypto futures', 'crypto hedge funds', etc. ... even more out-there fictitious stuff than current crypto.

Am curious whether anyone has computed how much cryptocurrency is needed to completely overwhelm (take down) existing computing power. Ask because I'm not sure this is a straight-line function since I suspect that the number of likely and probable interactions balloons much faster thereby creating longer strings of data to crunch through, etc.

267:

hire or borrow or even buy one and see how well it reacts to dummies falling in front of it.

One terrifying possibility is that humans don't possess the characteristics that the car thinks distinguish dummies from empty plastic bags blowing across the road. Because you don;t want the car doing an emergency stop every time it sees a shadow on the road, but it's tricky to find out whether it thinks a drunk falling over is worth stopping for. That's why we're going to let them roam the roads for a while, because from an ethical point of view performing the experiment in controlled conditions is different from performing it on the unsuspecting public.

Cyclists are going to be one of the considerations, not least because cyclists are a pretty effective political force in many rich countries. Recumbent cyclists will likely benefit also from the number of disable people who use them, because from a PR point of view the very first "autonomous car kills cripple" headline is going to shuffle the priority list for car makers.

There's going to be a whole lot of exciting things discovered from this series of experiments, but I'm pretty sure that answer we care about will be "fewer deaths", and it will be affirmative. Not least because I expect most of the autonomous cars to be electric.

268:

I suppose the interesting thing is that bitcoin is different from any other commodity any of us have any experience with.

If the price of gold gets very high, someone will go and open up a mine to dig up some more to increase the supply. Likewise a sufficiently high price for tulips could encourage an increase in supply. And so on for everything we have in any sane economy.

We rely on this kind of feedback mechanism to keep things stable: not everyone will start producing tulips, because the price would drop so far as to make them nonviable to farm.

But with bitcoin, the higher the price, the more incentive there is to mine, which increases the difficulty, which reduces the supply to exactly cancel everything out.

There's no natural mechanism to anchor bitcoin at any particular price. So on the one hand, there's nothing stopping the economy from ignoring it altogether (pricing it at $0), but also there's nothing really stopping the entire economy from devoting all resources to mining it.

We've never dealt with this before.

Satoshi just started the engine, and now it is running out of our control with no brake and no accelerator.

269:

how much cryptocurrency is needed to completely overwhelm (take down) existing computing power.

Not sure what you mean - surely not Landauer's principle applied to a minimal checksum, but everything else is a design decision. Bitcoin could be tweaked so that a modern graphics card could run the whole thing (set # of iterations to 1), or alternatively tweaked the other way so that every computing device in the world working together couldn't possibly find the next key in the 10 minutes allowed. That's as true for a single 1 cent bitcoin as it is for a billion, billion dollar bitcoins. As David Mitchell said of the GFC "it's all just numbers in a computer" :)

So, to quote that famous Australian intellectual leader "please explain"

270:

But with bitcoin, the higher the price, the more incentive there is to mine, which increases the difficulty, which reduces the supply to exactly cancel everything out.

Wait, what exactly do you think is being canceled out?

More miners reduces the average salary per miner, but not the amount of bitcoin in circulation.

271:

Kropotkin believed in a very early version of "small is beautiful" actually - not classical anarchism, but co-operatives & small groups & town meetings & similar. Never mind - paricularly as Stalin killed almost all of his followers, not long after

272:

... and now it is running out of our control with no brake and no accelerator. Which, I suspect is quite deliberate. It's a wrecking mechanism, designed to crash our system - & agreeing with Cahrlie, no they don't understand what money is, but that doesn't matter, because that's not the end-desire. It's very much aligned with T Ronald Dump & his followers, trashing everything, though, isn't it?

273:

No brakes you say?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/30/oh_god_here_come_the_libertarians/

Word getting out that it's not quite as tax free as people liked to imagine will probably have some effect.

274:

I wonder what in the world they are going to do with their billions ?

Well if any of them try and cash them in for another currency they will quickly not be worth billions.

275:

Now, in the US, if you write a check for $10k or over, the banks are required to hold it for 10 days, and it's reported to the IRS.

Got a reference? I've had checks drawn for more than that several times in the last year or few and none got held for 10 days.

Now there is a requirement that all (sort of kind of almost) transactions over $10K get reported to the authorities to make sure you're not money laundering.

276:

Because we never did anything about, or even had the idea of doing anything about, making sure that the population size did not exceed what the agricultural output could provide for, and instead got stuck in the rut of having to pinch food off other people to make up for it.

Without wishing to reignite the arguments about Malthus from a recent thread, it was not improved agricultural output that lifted us out of the rut of everyone having to spend all their time farming, it was increased ability to grab other people's output.

This was well established long before the time in question. It was apparent to Napoleon that Britain was vulnerable to being starved out. Agricultural output did increase after his time, but the population increased even more, so the overall situation got worse, not better, and by the time of WW1 the situation was even more precarious.

It's not much different even now, as although the agricultural output has caught up a bit, that's because we're eating oil now.

277:

"Stonehenge people were more into herding, IIRC, but the archeo-Turks were apparently foragers"

Maybe this is what enabled it - compensating for low food availability by drawing your supplies from a larger area than you can farm - kind of the same principle as my previous post, but at a much lower density. If you're a forager, you can find the food to move your 20-ton boulder by foraging around your route on the way; and if you're doing it over several centuries at an average rate of one boulder every few years, the area has time to regenerate before the next party of boulder-rollers comes through. Or if it's herding you're into, it's comparatively simple for a small number of people to maintain a much larger herd than they need just for themselves; your limiting factor is not how much forage there is for humans, but how much there is for creatures that eat grass; in England, once you've cleared the bigger plants away, that is "lots", and the grazing itself tends to stop them coming back.

I don't think the maintenance of common purpose over centuries is really a problem. After all, medieval cathedrals often took a few centuries to build, and they are much more complex structures being built in a time when factors like increasing population size, density and mobility, plus the odd plague, made the project much more vulnerable to disruption by outside context events.

I don't think it matters regarding that last point that the construction time was often greatly extended by the thing falling down half way through. Nor do I think it matters that the completed form had evolved rather from what the original instigators had in mind; it only might seem to because we're looking at it backwards. (For cathedrals and Stonehenge both.)

278:
“Now, in the US, if you write a check for $10k or over, the banks are required to hold it for 10 days, and it's reported to the IRS.”

Got a reference? I've had checks drawn for more than that several times in the last year or few and none got held for 10 days.

Might depend on whether you're dealing with one of those banks that regularly jerks customers around. I received a check from a major insurance company when some jerk ran a traffic signal and totaled my car. The bank refused to release the funds for 10 days.

279:

This worked for me, not sure why it wouldn't otherwise, as I am accessing it via a commercial account, not an academic one

http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/latrobe:34816?queryType=vitalDismax&query=kelly+lynne

280:

An amino acid is simply a molecule that has both an amine group and a carboxylic acid group* attached to the same hydrocarbon skeleton. Carbon being what it is, the number of possible skeletons is effectively unlimited, and so the number of possible amino acids is too.

However, here you are starting from molecules being assembled at random out of element soup by chucking some sort of energy at it, so your carbon chains are coming together from nothing one or two atoms at a time, and as they get larger they quickly start to get knocked apart as fast as they can form. So your pool of skeletons consists almost entirely of combinations of no more than a handful of carbon atoms, and the number of such combinations which are possible is obviously only a relative handful itself.

I agree with Heteromeles that the very simplest amino acids, as he lists, will be ubiquitous, because they contain so few carbon atoms that the entire range of possibilities is certain to be covered in abundance by random assembly.

The differences will arise with the heavier molecules, where the number of possibilities is much larger and the stability lower, the abundance is correspondingly less, so whether or not they get used starts to depend less on random chance and more on the proto-organisms** expressing some particular chemical affinity for them. At this point a visualisation of the set of constraints on possible "next steps" as a structure in phase space stops being a blob and becomes a branching tree structure. Further on still the branches will start to exhibit tangles and coalescences, but at this stage they are separate, and it is whichever ones are successful that set the "chemical alphabet" for later on.

For instance, one important amino acid (or pair of amino acids) on Earth is cystine/cysteine. This contains a sulphur atom, and different molecules of it some distance apart along a protein chain can link to each other sulphur-to-sulphur, which is very important for making sure that the protein can stably tie itself in the right sort of knots. Any biochemistry that depends on stringing amino acids together and tying the result in knots (which pretty much amounts to any biochemistry we can reasonably imagine) will need some component that behaves like this, but at the relevant level of complexity there are many possible arrangements for the carbon skeleton, and nothing says the dice have to land on the same one, nor that the sulphur atom has to be in the same place, nor that it even has to be a sulphur atom and not some other function capable of crosslinking.

*"Amino acid" in this context is an abbreviation for "α-amino carboxylic acid", meaning that it is a -COOH group providing the acid properties, and the amino group is attached to the same carbon as the -COOH is attached to. Very nearly all amino acids encountered in biochemistry are like this, but you can also have amino acids with acid functions other than carboxylate, and/or with the amino group not on the alpha carbon.

In "normal" amino acids the alpha carbon has four different things attached to it - the carboxylic acid group, the amino group, a hydrogen atom, and the rest of the molecule. This means that there are 2 distinct orders in which the things can be attached, which cannot be converted into each other without pulling two of the things off and swapping them around (try playing with a caltrop and four different fruits). The 2 orders are designated "left-handed" and "right-handed" or fancier words that mean the same, and the "handedness" property is known as "chirality" (opp. "achirality", its absence).

In reactions with achiral molecules that produce chiral molecules, the chirality comes out random, but when the starting molecules are also chiral it usually doesn't. So right at the start (element soup) amino acids of either chirality are equally likely to form. But once these start reacting with each other their chirality makes a difference, and in the long term one chirality comes to predominate over the other; as far as we know it is 50-50 which one.

**This is rather like machining the term "proto-organism" into a cylinder with fat ends and putting it into a test rig...

281:

How to isolate Birmingham from the motorway network with four life-size baby dolls...

282:

Could it be successfully argued, I wonder - or could it be reasonably straightforwardly possible to successfully argue - that it doesn't count as a "real" currency because it's not endorsed by a government or any of the other things that things like pounds and dollars are; therefore buying and selling it is buying and selling merchandise; therefore it counts for VAT?

283:

There is a good argument for saying bitcoin is a commodity, finite, requires mining and the market liable to disruption by state actors at any point.

284:

Now THAT is a really good idea - isolating Brummagem, that is (!)

285:

A bit cruel and unusual I think.

I lived there for a while. Hated the place, liked the people. The ability to leave at weekends was the main thing keeping me sane.

286:

One terrifying possibility is that humans don't possess the characteristics that the car thinks distinguish dummies from empty plastic bags blowing across the road.

You know all new Volvos come with pedestrian collision avoidance radar, as of this year? (It's been a high-end option for a little while.)

It only operates at speeds under 25mph, and it's only about 50% effective, but if the car thinks the driver is going to hit something — including small children, dogs, concrete bollards, other vehicles — and the driver doesn't hit the brakes in time, the car brakes automatically.

Note: 50% effective means "50% of the time when the driver was going to run over a pedestrian, the car stops them from doing so". It's imperfect, but it reduces traffic accidents significantly. And they're actively working to improve hazard perception as they get more vehicles and more data on the road.

So this isn't a hypothetical characteristic of some middle-distance-future fully self-driving vehicle; it's a safety system showing up in cars today. And I expect that by the time we have fully autonomous vehicles, it'll be as effective and as thoroughly entrenched as seat belts, air bags, and having a brake mechanism fitted to every wheel on the vehicle (which is a post-war innovation, at least in the UK).

287:

And also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Acts with the note that the issue is over the original laws allowing workers to be paid in goods, rather than the "Truck Acts (repeal)" legislation that the article mostly discusses.

288:

Stonehenge is only even "most impressive" for values relating to "biggest individual rocks". Avebury, and the Callanish (Lewis) and Ring of Broadgar complexes all have far more individual rocks (well over 200 in the case of Callanish).

289:

The ECJ has ruled that Bitcoin is a currency, and so exempt from VAT — but Capital Gains Tax applies.

292:

There's still a lot of confusion. The riddle is how that was organised without any form of centralised authority - or, at least, without one that left any traces in the archaelogical record. Nothing similar, let alone such a society, survived into the historical era or has evolved since. The cathedrals are NOT an example, because the church WAS a centralised organisation.

And, to paws4thot: that was my point. Perhaps I should have said 'most obviously spectacular'. Stonehenge attracts the loons because of the way it stands out on the landscape, but was only one of many equally mind-boggling sites.

293:

.. No. This is a very common talking point, but it is wrong. We are eating concentrated energy, yes, but substituting electrons for all oil uses in agriculture is utterly trivial.

Tractors and farm machinery can run on ammonia easily, ammonia can be synthesized in bulk and at reasonable prices entirely from ocean water, air and electricity. It is currently sourced from natural gas only because natural gas is a slightly cheaper hydrogen source. Not "Massively cheaper". Slightly.

Absolutely no part of mechanized agriculture will be impacted in any way you will notice whatsoever by civilization going off oil.

294:

Yes. And it isn't just whether you have the building blocks, but whether you have other components that are catalytic poisons or mimic the building blocks but don't work properly. We have plenty of such examples, after all. As you go up the level of complexity, the possibilities expand exponentially, and I would expect the variation would, too. For example, consider something very like cobalamin, but subtly different, or a ubiquitous compound that binds tightly to cobalamin, and what that would do to our biochemistry!

295:

You are an optimist - but we knew that!

Yes, I agree that it will deal with the simple cases, but that's not my concern. A pedestrian runs out into a road, too close for the car to stop, so it swerves instead - straight into a cyclist. Overall, I agree that there is the potential to increase safety, but there is also the potential for the government to give the vendors a free pass, so they get immunity from the failures of their systems. In the UK, that's SOP in the privatised national services, from ports and railways onwards.

I think that there are other, likely, serious harmful effects, too - but they will all be indirect. One will be propping up the unsustainable way in which dwelling, employment, utility and recreational areas are separated so that there is little option but a car-based solution. Another will be the traumatic effects on employment, and the social consequences of that - just as the conversion from arable farming to raising sheep was in the UK.

296:

Yeah There are railway level-crossing being equipped with similar syatems, so that, even without CCTV, the crossing can be closed for trains ... They've been having "fun" distinguishing between real actual pedestrians, inc small children, & the odd rabbit or dog .... It's got a lot better in the past 18 months, since they started on this, but they were getting far too many false positives.

297:

Remind us, again, to save effort - what's the ammonia "burning" cycle?

298:

... so they get immunity from the failures of their systems. In the UK, that's SOP in the privatised national services, from ports and railways onwards.

Bollocks

I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you go & read a few RAIB reports. START HERE

299:

A pedestrian runs out into a road, too close for the car to stop, so it swerves instead - straight into a cyclist

This is an interesting example of what I call the false trolley problem. The giveaway is the bit "too close for the car to stop" — someone is going to be hit by the car because the scenario is set up that way. The only question is, does the car hit the pedestrian or the cyclist?

Swap another variable: what if, instead of a cyclist, there's a car in the way. Should your self-driving car hit the other car instead? What if it's a bus, full of passengers without air bags and seatbelts?

The point is, the scenario is rigged from the outset because the parameters are set up so that someone is going to get hurt. To which my response is, "when did you stop beating your wife?"

(I'll grant you that locking in the automobile culture is a bad thing. But that's a different discussion.)

300:

That looks like what I was trying. Here's the error message:

SAFARI CAN't OPEN PAGE

Safari can't open the page "long URL" because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes, then try again.

I get that every time I try the link.

301:

It's going to be a legal question, especially if you assume both the car and cyclist are following the road laws. If the car swerves, if the pedestrian responsible for the cyclist's death (as it was their action that caused the swerve)? If the car doesn't swerve, is the pedestrian responsible for their own death, considering that if the cyclist hadn't been there the car would have swerved and the pedestrian would have lived*?

I can see lawyers arguing all sides of this one.

(Note: assuming that the technical problems are solved sufficiently that the car's software can tag both pedestrian and cyclist as 'objects that must not be hit' and therefore must decide which to hit.)

*So suppose that they had been walking across the road there for years because cars always missed them. Does that create an expectation of safety?

302:

Do you end up with a worst of all options kind of moral calculus?

Essentially you instruct the car to average risk of death across all participants in the crash. That way, you are not placing the value of one life above any other, but you can demonstrate that the car did it's best to minimise the loss of life in some kind of averaged way.

Problem is (another false trolley, sorry OGH) but you would then presumably get situations where the car would either

  • Try to thread the needle between cyclist and pedestrian (risk of death, 90% each) or
  • Choosing to plough into the cyclist (risk of death 100% (cyclist) and 0% (pedestrian))
  • Option 1 will almost certainly kill 2 people, but with no attempt to favour one over the other (thus attracting legal liability) so probably the 'safest' option for the car.

    303:

    What I would expect to actually happen is for the car to brake as hard as it can and hit the nearest object as slowly as possible.

    It results in the fewest decisions, carries none of the risks of swerving and is predictable to other road users. It's what most people do anyway.

    304:

    The point is, the scenario is rigged from the outset because the parameters are set up so that someone is going to get hurt. To which my response is, "when did you stop beating your wife?"

    If there is an option for no one to get hurt, that's obviously what you go with. A question with that solution doesn't inform anything.

    305:

    From watching Youtube dash cam videos (not a scientific sample, I know), I'm not convinced that's what most people do. Braking hard and swerving to avoid what is immediately in front seems to be the most common reaction.

    Which in my forced-choice scenario would be hitting the cyclist.

    In any case, I'm not so concerned about a single hypothetical example as what unifying principle society will use to determine responsibility for road collisions, and what rules car software will be forced to use by the legal system (by threat/fear of lawsuit or by legislation doesn't matter). Because there will be collisions and deaths, caused by software malfunction, human error, and bloody-minded stupidity and malice*.

    Thinking a bit on a tangent, if cars are programmed to always avoid pedestrians (slow down, stop, give them lots of room, etc) then will pedestrians take over the streets again once they trust that cars won't run them down? How will that affect public behaviour? Will people just start crossing streets whenever they want rather than at corners? Will cars be forced to move at a jogger's pace because they'd rather run on asphalt than concrete**? Will we need to make some streets restricted access (like divided highways) so that traffic can move faster than a walk?

    *Running 'innocently' across the road in front of a car pushing a pram (thus causing the car to decide you are two people and swerve into something. I suspect 'pranking' cars will be popular with a largish number of young folks.

    **Already happens in my neighbourhood. I've noticed that the joggers quickly move out of the way for big cars, but force small cars to drive behind them until they can pass.

    306:

    You should have learnt better by now. I did not say that they had NO constraints, merely that they are granted (a large amount of) immunity from laws that apply to other bodies. Look at the older acts (for ports and railways) or, for modern examples, look at privatised prisons (including Yarlswood) or the Disability Discrimination Act - and, if you think the latter's not a safety issue, think harder.

    307:

    Braking and swerving to the side of the road is a sensible solution - braking and swerving into traffic would be more likely to cause a head on collision and make things worse.

    But the car would need to know what rules it was under at all times and whether swerving away from traffic is towards the left or the right. And one way streets would be problematic.

    308:

    No, that's not what I was talking about. My point is that the harm is likely to be biassed against some classes of road user and the REAL risk is that the government gives the vendors a 'get out of gaol free' for such cases. And it's the latter aspect that concerns me most.

    "Swap another variable: what if, instead of a cyclist, there's a car in the way. Should your self-driving car hit the other car instead? What if it's a bus, full of passengers without air bags and seatbelts?"

    Generally, yes, because the risk of harm is lower. But let's assume that it would be a head-on collision between an HGV and bus at speed; the sane decision then would be to kill one or the other of the cyclist and pedestrian. The risk there is that that it would be (usually) the innocent cyclist - whose family would have limited or no redress if the previous point applies. But, ethically and (in theory) legally, the optimal decision would be to kill the pedestrian, whose negligence caused the accident.

    My point ISN'T that this is a blanket argument against autonomous vehicles, but that it IS one against letting known biassed authorities (and the DfT and many others involved are) make the rules in secret. And, if you think we are going to be told the details of the training criteria for the vehicles, I have this historic metal bridge over the First of Forth to sell you.

    309:

    Stand just out of line-of-travel ( so car "sees" you & notes you aren't moving ) but intermittently swing an empty can on a piece of string round your head, thus spooking car radar systems. Already been done to empty speed-cameras of film, IIRC.

    As for stupid & malicious ... Set of traffic-lights on fairly major road, traffic moving through, including cyclist, who is wobbling a bit, car driver just touches horn (i.e. a very short "beep") to warn cyclist of his presence - cyclist goes bananas, speeds up, deliberately weaves in front of car whilst making gestures. Wanker.

    310:

    GRRRRR.

    STOP IT.

    You SPECIFICALLY SAID Railways ( & Ports) & I restricted my self to Railways. [ You have now introduced prisons/detention centres, which are known problems - I believe this is called "whataboutery" ... ] And & so, you are still talking bollocks, becasue railways have had specific safety legislation & inspection for a very long time. And no, they are NOT "Granted immunity" - if only because they have their own, very strict safety legislation & regulation, which is well-inspected.

    311:

    Breaking news. M Flynn has turned himself in to the FBI/Mueller investigation ... Flip'em in turn, until you get to the big one .....

    And E Musk has, apparently beat his own deadline to get his AUS battery back-up "farm" on-line.

    312:

    Yes, railways. If you chase through the laws, you will find that many of the details are in regulations, and they are handled differently (and often omitted) for railways. E.g. electrical (think exposed high voltages) and multiple staffing regulations. But let's take an example I have direct knowledge of. They have no explicit legal requirement to make facilities, including level crossings, safe for disabled people. They usually do, but that needs political pressure. There was a case near me when they improved a dangerous level crossing by separating the pedestrians and cyclists from the motor vehicles, but the pedestrian facility was unusable by people in wheelchairs. There was a major row and they fixed that but, initially, they didn't want to. Oh, it's unusable by many cyclists, too, but that's normal and sane cyclists use the road, anyway.

    313:

    Likewise with the IRS:

    IRS Virtual Currency Guidance : Virtual Currency Is Treated as Property for U.S. Federal Tax Purposes; General Rules for Property Transactions Apply

    https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance

    314:

    Then there's the case we had here last week. People waiting for the bus which doesn't come for 30 minutes. Eventually two busses arrive and everyone crowds on, but the driver can't see out the doors (ie. safety issue) so asks those standing in front of the white line to get off. They are understandably upset.

    One young woman decided that she's going to walk in front of the bus as a protest. When the driver changes lanes to pass, she changes lanes. Driver calls Dispatch to report that bus will be delayed because it is proceeding at walking speed.

    https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/11/13/angry-ttc-commuter-takes-the-bitter-way-home-mallick.html

    315:

    Actually BOTH of them probably were wankers.

    If a cyclist is wobbling, absolutely the LAST thing to do is to sound the horn, because that will make him jump and possibly lose balance and fall over. And why did the driver do it in the first place? Because he was intending to overtake at traffic lights - which is illegal and often dangerous.

    The cyclist's behaviour (except for the gestures) is one of the options for minimising the risk from that sort of motorist. Without seeing the junction, I can't say for certain if it was an appropriate one in that case.

    316:

    And YOU ARE STILL TALKING BOLLOCKS

    The railways are required to operate & maintain all level crossings, with no monies from the roads budget, in accordance with the usual strict railway safety legislation. Disabled-access requirements are new & they really are doing their best to keep up, but there are still lots of (far too many) level cossings. Like I said READ the RAIB reports ....

    I suggest you compare railway fatalites now, with what they were in 2007,1997, 1987, etc And then look at road deaths for those years. And, then, just maybe, you will stop talking bollocks

    317:

    Thinking a bit on a tangent, if cars are programmed to always avoid pedestrians (slow down, stop, give them lots of room, etc) then will pedestrians take over the streets again once they trust that cars won't run them down? How will that affect public behaviour? Will people just start crossing streets whenever they want rather than at corners? Will cars be forced to move at a jogger's pace because they'd rather run on asphalt than concrete**? Will we need to make some streets restricted access (like divided highways) so that traffic can move faster than a walk?

    People already cross the road pretty much whenever they want, while self driving cars might be more responsive and safer than manual ones there is still going to be a risk of getting run over.

    If it ever was a serious issue there are a few things that could be done to diminish it. Firstly have all SDVs equipped with a laser on the front that paints hatching on the road equivalent to their safe braking distance. There are many bikes that use a similar technology to laser-paint a symbol of a bike on the road a few meters in front of them to help cars see them.

    Step onto the road into that and not only are you at risk of getting hit but it triggers the onboard sensors to save the recording. Given how face recognition technology is seemingly exploding at the moment those recordings could be used for issuing fines. Jaywalking isn't a crime here but if the issue of people walking out really is that serious then maybe it will be introduced.

    318:

    Bill Blondeau "There is an observer-mediated FTL drive... The blockchain is the drive, and the drive is the blockchain. OK? Short story title: The Velocity of Money."

    Cool idea, but not "velocity", please; that should be reserved for physical distance per unit time. Use "rate" for all other changes per unit time. I'd counterpropose "Burn Rate", which puns on the meaning for both rocketry and venture capital. (I also release that title into the public domain, though a tip of the hat would be nice if you get the story published under that title.)

    Re. delays in cashing $10K cheques in the U.S.: You're conflating 2 things here. First, the RICO requirement that banks report all transactions greater than $10K. Second, the requirements imposed by some banks (not all) that a cheque must successfully pass through the "clearinghouse" (rather than bouncing) before you're given access to the funds. This can easily take 10 days; I once had a bank draft (incorrectly) bounced by the clearinghouse more than 30 days after I deposited it, resulting in an unpleasant surprise. And don't get me started on the delays and sometimes hefty fees charged for clearing cheques from Canadian banks deposited in American banks.

    On another topic, the obvious solution for cyclists in a world of self-driving cars? Self-driving bicycles. Needless to say, they'd require a completely incompatible data transmission protocol and software developed in clean rooms to avoid any hint of copyright violation wrt smart car code. That couldn't possibly end badly, could it?

    I suspect that, as is so often the case in software, we're attacking the problem from the wrong end. Since most cases of vehicle strikes person are likely to end up in court, we need to start developing a consensus legal and ethical/philosophical opinion on a hierarchy of goals for how to avoid accidents. The goal is to optimally protect other people, but also protect software developers who are doing due diligence.

    Since we need to at least begin the research now, so that we're farther along when the consensus eventually arrives, it's not necessarily a huge problem that every vehicle manufacturer is working with different design criteria. For at least some of the current software, it should be possible to retrofit the software to meet eventual consensus goals rather than doing whatever feels most comfortable to each software team. Less efficient than starting with a design target, but will probably work out in the end.

    Better still, I'd love to see something along the lines of the open-source movement, with the entire auto industry pooling their resources to create a single set of software that meets a consistent set of guidelines. That is, treat human safety as a joint good rather than a commercial advantage. I do recognize the risk of committeeware (bloat, inefficiency) vs. customized and highly efficient software. But I'd say the Linux and OpenOffice examples are proof of concept that large collaborative software projects can work reasonably well when the goal is cooperation rather than coopetition or competition.

    319:

    "The point is, the scenario is rigged from the outset because the parameters are set up so that someone is going to get hurt."

    And the other point is that the car doesn't have to drive perfectly, it only has to do better (or at least as well as) a human driven car. So the question in my mind is "what do humans do in this situation?". Or actually, can you point to any actual real life instances of this problem happening on our roads?

    320:

    As I said, it happened to a particularly lethal crossing near me, just recently, where the initial proposals to upgrade increased the danger, especially to wheelchair users. Foxton. You seem to be making the assertion that all laws and regulations are equivalent.

    One example where railways get immunity is in the matter of liability to trespassers, not least from the aspect of exposed high voltages. Yes, THERE ARE GOOD REASONS for that immunity - but it's still immunity.

    321:

    Not necessarily poisonous. Note that they currently sell junk food with - are you sure we use left-handed, and not right-handed aciss? - with the opposite kind of sugar, so it's sweet, but doesn't get metabolized.

    322:

    I thihk that's sorta been done... let's see, highly improbable, which I suppose is like bistromath, and then there the Infinite Improbabliity drive.... Like a nice hot cuppa?

    323:

    If memory serves, biology uses left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars. Chemically identical sugars that are left-handed fit our sensors for what a sugar should taste like, but don't fit amylase enzymes so cannot easily be metabolised.

    Sweetness of a substance is determined by a property called the sweetness triangle; see here: http://shodor.org/succeed-1.0/compchem/projects/fall00/sweeteners/index.html

    Sugars fit this sensor, but not quite as well as weird things like Stevia, which are super-sweet.

    324:

    Sure. In 2016, when I wrote a large check from one money market fund to put into my credit union savings account, that's what they told me.

    Could be a credit union thing. They do have to report anything of $10k or over.

    325:

    Just had a thought - it could be that the FULL AMOUNT was not accessible for 10 days, but I might have had access to some of it.

    I know when I had to sell my house in Chi-town, in '03, a wire transfer took 3 days to fully clear.

    Btw, David L - are you the author of Arabella of Mars? And, for that matter, did you used to be in TAPS?

    326:

    Ever read Stephenson's Zodiac? Shut down a city with a very minor number of incidents....

    327:

    And plead guilty to one, and only one, lesser charge. This seems pretty obvious that he's singing an opera, and handing over the libretto, to Mueller.

    328:

    count as a "real" currency

    In my mind a real currency is any token people will accept in exchange for real goods. And people are willing to swap with each other.

    IOU notes written on napkins count as long as you can "spend" them when needed.

    Heck that 8 year or so old Zimbabwe note I have for 1,000,000 with an expiration date was a real currency. Worth not much more than Monopoly money but it was real. And I have a vague memory of some of us kids using Monopoly money to keep track of some things once upon a time. For that purpose it was "real".

    329:

    it's a safety system showing up in cars today.

    Yep. My no where near autonomous 2016 Civic has adaptive cruise control, lane keeping[1], and emergency braking. Being stupid it errs on the side of caution and will slow down for things that I don't need to slow down for. Especially things in other lanes when going around curves at slower speeds. In the 18 months I've had it it has braked a few times for a shadow or similar in front of me.

    [1]Lane keeping is interesting. It will steer the car to keep you in your lane if traveling at over 45mph. But if it doesn't notice any resistance from you holding the wheel it will flash a warning on the dash then talking telling you that "Steering is required."

    330:

    And the other point is that the car doesn't have to drive perfectly, it only has to do better (or at least as well as) a human driven car.

    Given the current state of the US legal system I'd say not over here.

    People are usually considered fallible. Well unless they have deep pockets.[1] Machines are supposed to be perfect.

    My wife works for a major airline. A somewhat related question we have discussed at times is "Why do your surviving relatives get to be rich if you die in an airline crash but not if you get hit by a drunk drive on the way to or from the airport?".

    331:

    Btw, David L - are you the author of Arabella of Mars? And, for that matter, did you used to be in TAPS?

    Nope. Not me.

    332:

    Will people just start crossing streets whenever they want rather than at corners?

    Hmm? You may find the UK somewhat confusing since that's what we do already.

    333:

    There are two issues here. (In the US banking with checks.)

    One is that it is easy to forge an "official" bank or cashiers check so banks do want to verify that they funds exist. Which is why they really like wire transfers for things like major house or car purchases. My bank drawn checks for over $10K were for tax payments across the country. I didn't get a penalty for being late but I suspect if I'd shown up the next day to sell the property I'd run into some issues.

    The other thing is that the federal government has laws about transactions over $10K must be reported to someone. FDIC, IRS, or some other agency. And walking in with $9900 in cash to deposit every few days will certainly get you a visit from some people in dark suits and a lack of a smile.

    334:

    Foxton? - This one? IIRC they're trying to get rid of it, IF they can get someone else to come up with the money for a bridge. Problematic, because the works @ Barrington is taking traffic again (I think).

    And, no - I was trying to emphasise that, usually, the railways have a higher imposed safety standard than elsewhere - as the accident record shows over the years, even with the higher rates in the past.

    335:

    Made several attempts to grow Stevia but it either doesn't germinate, or turns its toes up ....

    336:

    Is that the one about organochlorine pollution? I vaguely remember picking holes in what they got up to, which is what I usually tend to do with that kind of narrative :)

    337:

    That one. No, they WERE trying to eliminate it, but settled on a mere improvement to the level crossing - and it was that which I was referring to.

    338:

    Re: IRS guidelines for virtual currency.

    Plenty of wiggle room for misrepresentation and fraud:

    'The character of gain or loss from the sale or exchange of virtual currency depends on whether the virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer.'

    339:

    What I would expect to actually happen is for the car to brake as hard as it can and hit the nearest object as slowly as possible.

    It results in the fewest decisions, carries none of the risks of swerving and is predictable to other road users. It's what most people do anyway.

    It's what most people should do, but too many will swerve anyway. It seems to be a "natural" reaction (i.e. some kind of involuntary reflex). I've seen it happen several times where animals run out into the street and a driver swerves into oncoming traffic resulting in a head-on collision.

    And if you do brake straight ahead without swerving, there's a good chance the driver behind you won't be paying attention and will hit you in the rear end.

    340:

    O2 + NH4 -> H2O + N2? Or do you mean, what kind of engine? You can burn anhydrous in a conventional combustion engine if you strip out the polymer tubing for copper and adjust a few things. People have been doing that since ww2, (And farmers do it today!) it works. More efficiently, fuel-cell + electric drive recovers an impressive percentage of the amount of energy expended making the NH4. But that is a luxury, its not necessary to keep the tractors rolling.

    341:

    .. Not if the driver behind you is a machine. That is one reason I expect cars without .. driving assists, to become outright illegal. Self-driving cars will probably include a spectrum of cars that pretend you are in control to various degrees, but all of them will have the reflexes of silicon to deal with the car in front doing an emergency halt. No pileup, just a lot of hot break pads.

    342:

    Prediction: All vehicles will at some point be equipped with GPSes feeding a wireless LAN. Pedestrians can opt-in using an app on their smartphones. The data streams will feed a heuristic system in each car, giving them absolute awareness of every connected unit in the immediate area.

    343:

    Re: US Banking - 'hold'

    The US is based on a unit banking system so there are (still) plenty of ma-and-pa type banks, not just the mega, mega BoA and Citi that capture headlines. It's mostly for that reason that there's a tradition of a long hold on checks until they pass the clearinghouse. Fine for the 17th, 18th, 19th and right up to the late 20th century ... but .... this makes zero/none/zilch sense in an era when 99.99999% of all inter-bank transactions are done electronically (processed at near light speed). Personally, I think that these banks are (ab)using tradition to leverage some 'free' funds to play with and to avoid paying their customers for that privilege.

    Recall the first time I sold some 'company' stock: first, the official corporate stock brokerage firm held onto the money for about 5 business days and then the inter-bank transfer took another 10 business days. Then my bank sat on it for a few days because it was a sizeable amount. Anyways, it took almost a month before I actually had the money free to use. Betcha each outfit that touched these funds used them at least passively to shore up their trades.

    344:

    Actually, it's not that simple. I have seen cars continue to brake when they should have swerved, which can be as bad. On black ice, often the correct solution is to release the brakes (entirely) and swerve into the verge, or at least hit other traffic a glancing blow. But I am not denying the mistake of swerving to miss a squirrel and hitting another car head-on is probably more common.

    345:

    A rather interesting analysis of the tech behind cryptocurrencies I've seen recently: https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

    OG.

    346:

    "Given the current state of the US legal system I'd say not over here."

    Yes, I was rather assuming a rational legal system...silly of me, really. But I guess a country still refusing to use the metric system of measurements could be expected to be a bit slow in other areas, too.

    347:

    Lars predicted: "All vehicles will at some point be equipped with GPSes feeding a wireless LAN. Pedestrians can opt-in using an app on their smartphones. The data streams will feed a heuristic system in each car, giving them absolute awareness of every connected unit in the immediate area."

    Yes! And add predictive technology that identifies patterns of movement so as to predict which pedestrians are likely to intercept a vehicle's trajectory. Ideally, pedestrians should also be alerted by their cell phones when they're about to wander into a street. Great idea! I'd vote for that.

    FeAs an additional bonus, it would help thin the herd of "libertarians" who insist that the government has no right to track them./Fe

    Sarcasm aside, I see the small-L libertarian concept as a lovely utopian ideal that hasn't a chance in hell of working in the real world. It assumes that everyone -- without pressure from an external agent such as a government -- will accept everyone else's right to exist and voluntarily restrain one's own actions to avoid inconveniencing or harming anyone else. Hence: like anarchy, patently unrealistic in the real world, probably very dangerous, and for the same reasons.

    348:

    It reads like a scam: you compete to do this service for us and we'll send you our very own ingenious imaginary asset.

    349:

    "...sound the horn, because that will make him jump..."

    It also issues (what I call) a reptile-level challenge to a fight. This is the problem with car horns: it is impossible to use them in a non-aggressive manner, because it is an inherently aggressive sound. There is no such thing as "just a friendly bip", regardless of the driver's intention. A car horn has the same kind of sonic qualities as an animal's vocal chords being driven to maximum output - like a barking dog, or a human yelling in rage - and so it causes an instinctive activation of fight-or-flight response.

    I read Greg's description of the cyclist's reaction not as defensive behaviour, but as an aggressive response - the sentiment "fuckin' beep at me, you cunt, I'm gonna piss you off" expressed in actions rather than words. I would also expect the driver to interpret it as aggression (regardless of its actual intention), and to react with a further escalation, such as shoving ahead of the cyclist and then pulling almost into the gutter while still only about half way past.

    I disagree with the labelling of that kind of cyclist behaviour as "defensive riding", both because (as above) it is counterproductive from that viewpoint, and because of the tendency these days of cyclists of the fanatical cars-are-evil variety to deliberately try and push the situation to the verge of collision, so that they can post the video on youtube while crying about "I was riding defensively and this evil car still nearly hit me!" - the label "defensive riding" being used as a cloak for aggressively holier-than-thou behaviour which is bound to end in tears sooner or later.

    The audible alert device on a car ought to be something like a pleasant-toned handbell, or a glockenspiel, or something sweet-toned of that kind. (If it absolutely has to be a horn, then it should be something like a tuba, which can be comic rather than aggressive.)

    (Conversely, the audible alert on an emergency vehicle should be a mechanical/pneumatic horn or something similar, and not an electronic waily thing. Reason being that the horn produces frequencies which are not harmonically related, and this makes it much easier for the hearing system to determine which direction the sound is coming from. But the harmonically-related sounds from a waily thing tend to sound as if they're coming from no particular direction, so instead of being able to react sensibly as soon as you hear it, you end up spending several seconds staring around in a distracted and gormless fashion until the actual blue lights come into view.)

    350:

    I agree with you that Greg's description was of aggressive behaviour, but you are simply wrong that it might not have been primarily defensive. Often the safest thing to do if a motorist is showing signs of overtaking approaching a pinch point is to speed up, pull out, wobble (if you can do so, safely) and make it clear that it is NOT an appropriate place to overtake. Oh, yes, that can go wrong - but so can NOT doing it, because the driver overtakes, realises there isn't room, and swerves into you. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. As a vulnerable cyclist (very poor balance), I am very sensitive to this problem.

    351:

    Re: AI cars, pedestrians & cyclists --- streets?

    Seems that everyone is assuming that street design will remain the same even as self-driving cars become standard. Why?

    Streets are constantly being repaired, re-surfaced, and - increasingly - re-channeled, i.e., dedicated public transit, bike & HOV lanes. Consequently, I'm guessing that AI cars will force another urban roadway re-configuration that will probably reduce the potential for car and pedestrian interactions. Also, consider: if the car passenger is not driving, he/she does not need to see the road - and would probably prefer to watch his/her smartphone screen anyways - therefore the cars do not need windows, and with no viewing of the outside being done, AI car traffic lanes could be covered over entirely until car lanes become indistinguishable from underground subways.

    353:

    Elderly Cynic noted: "On black ice, often the correct solution is to release the brakes (entirely) and swerve into the verge, or at least hit other traffic a glancing blow."

    Not quite. Here in Canada, black ice is a common road hazard under certain weather conditions. "Swerve" is the wrong suggestion almost 100% of the time. On black ice, the coefficient of friction is damned near zero, and you rarely have enough traction to swerve. If you do, there's usually just enough friction that you completely lose control of the car and create a spin you're not going to get out of before you hit something. The correct response 100% of the time is to lift your foot completely from the gas and allow air resistance to begin slowing you. Then use standard winter emergency braking techniques (see below) as soon as you're off the black ice; braking while on the ice is typically just going to cause a spin.

    (Note: Black ice is really just normal ice, but tends to be much smoother. Hence, less friction.)

    That's not just theory... They teach us this at an early age in the driving courses most of us take before we apply for a license. I've passed through several patches of black ice at speed over the years, fortunately with no serious problems. Worst one, I ended up in a snowbank because I was on a turn and had no chance to avoid the ice. Most dramatically, I survived hitting a patch of black ice at 110 kph on Interstate 95 in the U.S. by doing exactly what I described, but I was damned lucky: it was just before a bend in the road, and I saw the car ahead of me hit the ice and spin, giving me time to brace myself and react appropriately. The ice ran out just before the bend, letting me slow down enough to make the turn. I then immediately got off the road and spent the night in a hotel until the road crews had time to spread salt.

    Elderly Cynic: "But I am not denying the mistake of swerving to miss a squirrel and hitting another car head-on is probably more common."

    We're infested with squirrels out here in the 'burbs, so yeah, what you said. It's an instinct you can control with a combination of foreknowledge of the solution, keeping your eyes open for the little bastards, and retraining your instinctive response into a braking response. With modern antilock brakes, you just keep the steering wheel straight, mash down on the brake pedal, and let the car's electronics do the work for you. With older cars, you don't "pump" the brakes (a misleading description of the correct technique), but instead press down slowly but firmly until the wheels begin to lose traction, then back off and try again. The result resembles "pumping", but pumping incorrectly suggests rhythmic back and forth motion on the pedal rather than the more effective adaptive braking I described.

    Note: Also works for cats, dogs, and toddlers.

    354:

    Re: 'The audible alert device on a car ... a pleasant-toned handbell, or a glockenspiel, or something sweet-toned of that kind.'

    Or, connect the sensor to your phone so that Siri can tell you there's a car coming.

    355:

    Great Britain has c. 246 million miles of road; how much of that do you think will be converted in the next 50 years?

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/428857/road-lengths-in-great-britain-2014.pdf

    For some demented reason, the Web seems to have the deluded idea that it is 1,000 times shorter, and the USA has the longest network. I can't find a figure for the USA comparable to the GB one.

    356:

    Ah, as simple as that - I was expecting a much more complicated route, for some reson. OK why aren't we doing it RIGHT NOW - even given the poisonous nature of NH4 ??

    357:

    Don't go there ... f the car passenger is not driving, he/she does not need to see the road - and would probably prefer to watch his/her smartphone screen anyways - therefore the cars do not need windows, and with no viewing of the outside being done, ... Thus guaranteeing that a large percentage of the passengers will promptly vomit all over the inside of the car. [ Motion with no referents ] Please think these things through ......

    358:

    The great attraction of ammonia (NH3) is that you can contain it in a fairly similar spec of tank to that which is already used for Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG). Due to some work done at Leeds University, a catalyst to turn ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen gas is now available.

    This means that you can run hydrogen fuel cell vehicles off an easily stored, easily supplied fuel which isn't carbon-based, and which in storage isn't an absolute nightmare to contain. Until the automotive fleet is hydrogen fuel cell based, relatively ordinary internal combustion engines can use ammonia as a fuel.

    359:

    Actually, its coefficient of friction is quite high - at least 5%. And, while I agree that losing control is the worst solution, and I probably should have said 'steer' rather than 'swerve', you are wrong that steering for a lower impact is almost always the wrong thing to do. Air resistance doesn't help much at low speeds, for example, and I should HOPE that you are driving slowly if black ice is even likely. I can give you an anecdata example, which is one of quite a few I have had or seen in my life.

    I was driving on a rural road at c. 20 MPH where I expected black ice, when the car 50 yards ahead stopped. I tried to slow down, by touching my brakes, but my anti-braking system wasn't having any of it, and I was on a slight slope down (1:200). I thought for a moment (yes, I had time) and steered into the bank, which stopped my car.

    Yes, I learnt that technique, too, and used it - which is why I loathe anti-braking systems, but they are unfortunately unavoidable nowadays :-(

    360:

    Great Britain has c. 246 million miles of road;

    Overestimate by a thousand, according to the very government document you link to.

    361:

    Re: Subway & vomit

    You've gotta be kidding me. There are tens/hundreds of millions of subway and commuter train riders who each day, twice a day do not look out the windows and do not vomit.

    Greg ... maybe as per your own advice: 'think things through'? (Or, do you personally happen to suffer from a form of 'motion sickness' that manifests when you're in a moving vehicle and unable to see a horizon?)

    362:

    I really AM going senile, aren't I? I rechecked that three times, and saw my delision each time. There's no need to answer that ....

    363:

    Elderly Cynic noted: "Actually, its coefficient of friction is quite high - at least 5%."

    Fair enough. I was speaking from the perspective of retaining control during braking. For that context, it's damned low.

    EC: "And, while I agree that losing control is the worst solution, and I probably should have said 'steer' rather than 'swerve', you are wrong that steering for a lower impact is almost always the wrong thing to do."

    My bad... I didn't extend my reply sufficiently far. I was fixated on my U.S. Interstate highway example, and that's a divided highway. In most cases, you're going to be on a relatively straight stretch of road where simply coasting to a halt while keeping the wheel straight ahead will be an option. We certainly agree that if you're not going to be able to stop before hitting something nasty (like an oncoming logging truck in a non-divided highway), you do want to steer into the softest collision you can manage. Ideally a snow bank.

    EC: "I should HOPE that you are driving slowly if black ice is even likely"

    It's not always that simple. Weather can change unpredictably over relatively short periods and short distances in winter. For example, Montreal to Boston via Vermont on I95 is a 5- to 6-hour drive, with highly variable conditions. We've learned all the nasty points, and we check weather conditions at key points along the way both before we leave and (when possible) en route. In 18 years of driving that road, it was the first time we hit black ice... and the roads were clear right up to the point where the ice appeared, giving no warning.

    364:

    There speaks someone who obviously doesn't suffer. Trains are generally fine for travel-sickness victims as rails are smooth and acceleration and deceleration constant. Road vehicles on the other hand move in unexpected directions rapidly and it's generally the small random movements that trigger the vomiting. I won't get in a car if certain people are driving, I can't sit sideways in a short haul bus, and I can't read or watch a screen when a passenger in any road vehicle. If I can't see out there'd better be a supply of puke-proof bags immediately available.

    365:

    But I guess a country still refusing to use the metric system of measurements could be expected to be a bit slow in other areas, too.

    We don't refuse to use metric. We just use both so all the handy types like me and mechanics and machinists and such get to own 80% more tools than elsewhere in the world. Keeps the economy running with all that extra spending and such.

    Oh, well.

    366:

    Thanks for that analysis link. Another couple of links, just because links are good. While poking through stacks of papers on a desk, found this indirectly; might be interest to some. It directly addresses attacks on Bitcoin crypto primitives. (Note that attacks such as the hypothetical Chinese DDoS-based attack described by Murphy @ 122 are not covered.) https://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/2377/2e1eb97b39865aee0a3b3e83b0d87d0798ab.pdf On Bitcoin Security in the Presence of Broken Crypto Primitives (19 Feb 2016) (Note: Don't see any citations refuting it.) We have presented the first systematic analysis of the effect of broken primitives on Bitcoin. Our analysis reveals that some breakages cause serious problems for Bitcoin, whereas others seem to be inconsequential. The main vectors of attack on Bitcoin involve collisions on the main hash or attacking the signature scheme, which directly enable coin stealing.

    ( Via Long-Term Public Blockchain: Resilience against Compromise of Underlying Cryptography, paywalled, April 2017. )

    367:

    To do what you describe require the tires to keep rolling without sliding on the ice. And with front wheel drive automatic transmissions that just plain hard to do unless you understand what is going on. Shifting into neutral or depressing the clutch on a manual is the first step. But most people have no idea.

    368:

    "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

    I think what's going on here is that you and I are assigning different weightings to the "do" and "don't" options. I pretty much never consider it desirable to try and discourage drivers from overtaking just because it's narrow. I find it's quite the opposite problem - what I find massively annoying is drivers sitting on my back wheel for ages and not coming past, and the message I try to convey by my riding style is not "don't come past", but "for goodness sake do come past, stop thinking you need to give me six feet clearance, six inches is fine, just stop sitting on my arse".

    Pretty much the only occasions when I do ride as you describe are when I'm trying to turn right, and so need to somehow make my way across the stream of traffic and out into the middle of the road. (Indeed it's not entirely deliberate, since trying to screw my head round far enough to see over my shoulder while sticking my right arm out tends to make me wobble all over the place.)

    Perversely, that seems to be more effective at encouraging drivers to shove past regardless than sticking rigidly in the gutter is.

    I quite agree that many cyclists (although not Greg's one) do do it for primarily defensive reasons. After all, there is plenty of propaganda to promote it on that basis. My point of disagreement is that such propaganda and beliefs are flawed, because they assume that the driver will react like an Asimovian robot and not like a bald monkey. Real drivers often see it as a challenge, and respond by trying to retake their perceivedly advantageous position.

    (Viewpoint perspective: my reason for using a bicycle is that it's less effort than walking. My speed, therefore, rarely exceeds 10mph or so, absent gravity assistance. When I'm cycling I am fully aware that to the car drivers I am a pain in the fucking arse, and that cyclists most certainly are "second-class citizens" on the road, no matter what the law says, for inescapable and overwhelming practical reasons. It is inevitable that I will piss drivers off just by being there, so I try not to piss them off any more than I can help. I find it fiercely embarrassing - and consequently annoying - when the exigencies of the route (like turning right) compel me to ride in an aggravating style. I feel the same when the behaviour of one driver, in refusing to overtake no matter how meekly I try and ride, is causing my presence to piss off all the drivers behind them and making me feel it's my fault they're all being held up. I've been knocked off countless times, but all the times I can remember it's been due to cars crossing give-way lines when they shouldn't.)

    369:

    See also: C&SLR :)

    370:

    I was driving on a rural road at c. 20 MPH where I expected black ice, when the car 50 yards ahead stopped. I tried to slow down, by touching my brakes, but my anti-braking system wasn't having any of it, and I was on a slight slope down (1:200). I thought for a moment (yes, I had time) and steered into the bank, which stopped my car.

    Similar incident last winter. This was in the US so adjust right/left as needed. Car was stopped at a stop sign 50 meters ahead on a similar slight downslope. ~25 MPH. Brakes applied, but weren't slowing the car. Managed to maneuver the car to a straight line several meters to the right of the initial trajectory, and hard braked straight line. Car ended up with 50 cms to the car on the left (not counting mirrors) and 50 cms to the stop sign pole to the right, windows even with other car's windows. Exciting. Should have been paying closer attention to the possibilities perhaps. This is just to say that these maneuvers are possible.

    Anyway, some (not all) black ice terminology purists insist that it is that generally-morning condition of invisible frost on the road, with no reflection to give it away. The heuristic in my area is that when the windshield(screen) of a car outside needs to be cleared of frost in the early AM, all turns that haven't been exposed to full sun should be assumed to be covered in black ice.

    371:

    Actually, I suffered from motion sickness (cars, trains, buses, planes, etc.*) into my 20s when I took up sailing. :) Not sure how or why, but after that I could handle (almost) any type of movement. Can even read a book while riding in a car which is a big deal for anyone who's ever had motion sickness.

    372:

    Automatic transmissions are not common over here. Everyone who is physically able to do it passes their driving test in a manual, because if you do it in an automatic you only get a licence to drive automatics and that is a crippling restriction. They then carry on driving manuals because it's cheaper, mainly.

    What EC is on about is the inability of the rather crude ABS systems everything uses these days to cope with slippery conditions. The brake modulators and wheel rotation sensors are too coarse to provide the delicate control required, so the system just gives up and you get no braking at all. With plain brakes you'd at least get a tiddly bit. Unfortunately it's next to impossible to buy a car without ABS these days.

    In icy conditions you're mostly better off to not touch the brake pedal at all, and do all your slowing down on engine braking. The problem, of course, is that you can't come to a complete halt this way. You still need the friction brakes to lose those final few mph.

    On snow, it can be useful to lock the wheels deliberately and use the wedge of snow ploughed up ahead of them to help you stop. Again, you can't do this with ABS.

    IMO the main problem with black ice is simply that you can't see it. I used to think it didn't exist, and was just an excuse people made up for being incompetent at driving on ordinary ice - until I hit some one day. I was amazed to find that even on getting out of the car and trying to stand on it, I still couldn't see it, even though it wasn't easy to stand either.

    373:

    You may find the UK somewhat confusing since [crossing anywhere is] what we do already.

    Last time I drove in the UK was in the 1980s, and I don't recall that happening much. But I didn't do much city driving anyway (driving on the wrong side was pretty stressful) and decades-old memory isn't very reliable.

    In Canada jaywalking is a misdemeanour in most places, and it's a decent defense for the driver if they hit you[1]. People do it, but they usually[2] look both ways first and wait for gaps.

    I'm thinking that if pedestrians believed the autonomous cars would always see them and stop they would do it a lot more, to the extent that vehicular traffic could become a lot slower with cars always braking and accelerating back to speed (which would also eat into the energy savings of autonomous cars).

    I heard Peter Watts say (at a seminar last spring) that a science fiction writer is trying to predict the traffic jam from the horseless carriage. What 'traffic jams' will autonomous cars bring?

    Technical question: is the software actually able to tag objects as 'person', 'tree', 'dog' etc, or if it more of a self-trained 'when you see this image you do this' kind of thing? If it's the later then worrying about trolley problems is probably useless, as the car won't know enough to run some moral calculus of value routine. If it can do that then making those choices has to be part of the design process.

    I'm all for autonomous cars (and I want to buy one) but I suspect the legal hurdle they have to clear isn't 'safer than the average driver' but 'perfectly safe'.

    [1] Driving at 60 km/h along a road when someone darts out from the sidewalk you're expected to stop, but as they are expected not to do that you're much less likely to lose your license.

    [2] Excepting phone zombies and people running for the bus on the other side of the road…

    374:

    I think that these banks are (ab)using tradition to leverage some 'free' funds to play with and to avoid paying their customers for that privilege.

    back in the 1980s I moved from Edmonton to Ottawa. Opened a new account a local branch of the same bank I had used since I was six, and they transferred all my money over and closed the old account. Very convenient.

    Except they also put a hold on the money 'until the funds clear' — when they were being electronically transferred between branches of the same bank. I discovered this when I spent a holiday weekend broke in a strange city (no cash from the cash machine, no cheques because the new cheques hadn't arrived, and no branches open).

    The bank wouldn't admit that they had done anything wrong in not warning me this would happen. They had the use of my life savings for a week while I had to borrow money from friends to buy food.

    That's the reason I avoid the Bank of Montreal even decades later.

    375:

    Sure, there's always some wiggle room, but I'm sure the IRS would take notice of transactions over 50K.

    Also here's the IRS Cryptocurrency FAQ: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf

    376:

    And ... tube trains have windows & you can (even if only marginally) see the wall/tunnel outside. As stated by others, car motion is different & can be very bad. I don't normally suffer from motion-sickness of any type - but: ( Only time I've been sea-sick was on a modern "cruise" type of long-distance ferry, with not enough windows - the sea wasn'r especially rough, either, I've been i much worse & kept my lunch where it belonged ... ) OTOH, I have felt distinctly unwell in road vehicles, especially those with "soft" suspensions.

    377:

    4-wheel drive! Limited slip-diff between front & back! Chunky tires! 0.5 tonne adhesion weight per wheel! And still - take it slowly & gently in those conditons, because if/when over 2 tonnes of L-R start to slide ( yes, it does happen ) you had better be prepared. I have an unfair advantage, I started to learn to drive in the winter of '62-63.

    378:

    Mostly, engineering laziness / difficulty.

    There is an obvious market for farm machinery designed to run on anhydrous ammonia - a lot of farmers have to deal with the stuff anyway, and it is a whole lot cheaper than even diesel before taxes, but you cant just drop an off-the-shelf engine in to this years tractor model, you have to roll your own, and that is not the kind of expertise most designers of farm machinery even have.

    So you get the occasional gear head doing a mod themselves, but the default has been to stick with mainstream engine. That status quo would last, oh, about a week, under conditions where oil supply was even under slight question. The availability of ammonia-> hydrogen catalysts will probably kill it even absent any further oil price spikes, because that allows for efficient electrification of the entire power train, and hydrogen fuel cells are an off-the-shelf kind of deal by now. (Direct ammonia-to-power fuel cells exist. But are nowhere near mature. )

    379:

    My series 3 had chunky tyres too. Turns out the chunks are actually too big to be of any use on greasy wood (which behaves similarly enough to ice) so they were effectively just slicks. That resulted in a firm slide into a tree, which graciously slowed me to a stop.

    380:

    I have to say, about the word "libertarian," that I have called myself that since I learned the word in 1969, and have used it with a fairly consistent meaning throughout that time. What I mean by it is fairly well summed up by the phrase "equality before the law, liberty under the law, nobody above the law" that I read in some novel much earlier this year. I don't think I know the people some of you are talking about, perhaps because I don't follow popular political culture closely.

    381:

    Is there a link for the ammonia to hydrogen process? I've been starting to do some research on fuel cell technology for a current project, but I haven't run into this information as yet.

    382:

    I know about automatics in the EU. We recently paid an extra e80 for a week to get an automatic rental in Ireland. No need to try and shift with the "wrong" hand AND stay on the wrong side of the road. I wonder how long this will last as automatics can now get better mileage than all but the best drivers of manuals.

    My point is that with front wheel drive you not only need to not brake to keep some control over steering but also disable the drive train. On a rear wheel car you can retain some control over steering by just staying off the brakes.

    383:

    Yes. One of the things I miss about my 96 Explorer is the ability to put the drive train into 4 wheel lock mode so no differential slip and a very low gearing. I would just put it in Drive or Reverse and let it crawl along.

    4800 pounds with just one passenger and not a full tank of gas.

    As to driving a stick, I learned driving a 1954 8N Ford farm tractor and a 59 Chevy pickup in fields. The Chevy was fun as it was 3 on the column. I doubt many of the people who think they can drive a manual could handle a non stopping turn with a blinker and down shifting while turning. Especially turning left as your arms are moving in opposite directions.

    384:

    I think it's important to remember that there are two kinds of Libertarians. First, there are those Libertarians who don't understand that Ayn Rand was writing fiction, and second there are those who don't understand that Robert Heinlein was writing fiction.

    385:

    I have successfully opened and downloaded Kelly's thesis in both Safari and Chrome from that page. So it is possible

    386:

    First, there are those Libertarians who don't understand that Ayn Rand was writing fiction,

    Well considering that she didn't admit to such...

    See Alan Greenspan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan#Objectivism

    387:

    Yeah. The transmission alterations & improvements when the Defender series was introduced made a huge difference. [ Lim-slip front/back diff, much better gearboxes, steering that goes where you point it & mpore power - very useful for engine braking, permanent 4-wheel drive as a result of the new diff ... ]

    388:

    A "grey fergie" was one of the most fun drives I've had ... One of these

    389:

    I doubt many of the people who think they can drive a manual could handle a non stopping turn with a blinker and down shifting while turning. Especially turning left as your arms are moving in opposite directions.

    • Rubs eyes *

    You mean you don't have multi-lane roundabouts in your country? As in: approach from dual carriageway speeds, slowing down, keep an eye peeled, go directly onto the roundabout in second gear without stopping if there's nothing in your way, accelerate around it, and exit in third?

    I'm not sure you can pass a UK driving test without changing gear while turning.

    ("Automatic" transmissions are getting commoner these days because it's impossible to build an efficient hybrid with a truly manual drive train, and electrics just don't need gears at all, and the dominant cost in running a vehicle in the UK is still buying the fuel for it, which means modern automatics have an edge. But it still takes a decade for this sort of price signal to filter through the second hand market.)

    390:

    Those are intersecting categories!

    391:

    Whose law? Your definition is fine, but incomplete, without an answer to that. It's not merely the plutocrat and the peasant issue, but whether minorities have any rights if the majority doesn't want them to have them.

    392:

    I don't want to pursue this one, but your attitude is why cycling is not going to recover as a form of transport in the UK my lifetime. Many people are seriously endangered by close passing, whether by cars, other cycles or even pedestrians, and I am one of the few such who still cycles. Basically, anyone with seriously impaired balance is, and that includes most elderly people.

    That has led to most of us (yes, including me) to change from cycling to driving, even for just a mile, if the route is likely to have that problem; I now drive 70% more than I used to, for that reason alone. And that includes ALL cycle lanes less than 1.5 metres wide and ALL cycle paths less than 2.5 metres wide, as well as the much-favoured pinch points at lights and elsewhere.

    This relates to the autonomous car issue, because I have seen reports that some planners and other govbods are rubbing their hands at the prospect, because the improved predictability means that they will be able to reduce the size of roads. Yes, cycling (possibly assisted) remains BY FAR the best solution to the short- and medium-range personal transport requirements.

    393:

    Troutwaxer notes: "I think it's important to remember that there are two kinds of Libertarians. First, there are those Libertarians who don't understand that Ayn Rand was writing fiction, and second there are those who don't understand that Robert Heinlein was writing fiction."

    I've read several reviews of Rand biographies, and the gestalt that I took away from them was that Rand had the emotional maturity of a 2-year-old in mid-tantrum. She was apparently a nasty person in real life, and there wasn't much philosophy in what she wrote beyond "I got mine". If the reviews were even moderately objective, her fiction was all Mary Sue stories, and her attitude towards others was "I want all the benefits and none of the responsibilities, and too bad if it hurts you". Not having read the actual biographies or any contrasting biographies written by her fans, I can't say how accurate this description is. But nothing I've read about her or her books makes me interested in reading further. Contrary opinions from those who have actually read Rand welcomed; I'm always happy to readjust my mind map of the world when I'm wrong.

    Heinlein, though not nearly as nasty as Rand, seems also to have been a fairly unpleasant person if you didn't happen to fit neatly within his prescribed worldview. (I particularly recall stories about how badly he treated Arthur Clarke when they disagreed over pacifism.) I have read some biographical information about him, including his own "Grumbles from the Grave", and it seems likely that Lazarus Long was Heinlein's Mary Sue. Although it's true that you can't necessarily infer an author's character from their fiction, it's equally true that most authors won't spend a career writing about protagonists who they find distasteful. That being said, it's easy to see many congruencies between his life and the protagonists in his fiction, and they present a consistent pattern. I think that had I met him, I'd have loved him as a teacher -- until I began to disagree with him and we parted ways unpleasantly. And I've always admired, but never fully trusted or unreservedly liked, the few real people I've known who fit the Heinlein character profile.

    In contrast with Rand, I read pretty much everything Heinlein wrote, and greatly enjoyed most of it -- even when I disagreed, he made me think about why. Only two exceptions: I've never been able to get more than 50 pages into "I Will Fear No Evil" (no idea why -- it just doesn't catch me) and "Farnham's Freehold" is one of the few books I've been tempted to burn or use as kitty litter. His consistent message of the importance of brains and the need for self-sufficiency resonates strongly with me and became an important factor that shaped adolescent and young adult me. I'm grateful to him for that.

    394:

    I don't doubt it. I'm just unable to do so myself, using either Safari or Firefox.

    Maybe the TDSB firewall/caching server is interfering somehow? I'll have to try again from another location and see if it works there.

    395:

    OK. Re-reading my comment I guess I wasn't clear. I was referring to a manual shift on the steering column. It's a definite skill set that many manual drivers, at least in the US, do not have.

    396:

    "Automatic" transmissions are getting commoner these days because it's impossible to build an efficient hybrid with a truly manual drive train, and electrics just don't need gears at all, and the dominant cost in running a vehicle in the UK is still buying the fuel for it, which means modern automatics have an edge.

    My other point was that even for petrol powered transportation cars (not so much pickup trucks and larger SUVs, which don't seem to exist in Europe in meaningful numbers) automatic transmission are getting to the point where there are very few drivers good enough with a manual to do better.

    In the US an automatic adds between $1,000 and $2,000 to the cost of a consumer transportation vehicle (Corvettes and such excluded) so if you can use less than that in gas over a few years they will start to make more inroads faster in Europe.

    397:

    Though I think I haven't even seen a manual shift in the steering column since the Eighties here in Finland. The car I last remember seeing one was a 1970's Jeep Wagoneer, and that wasn't common even then.

    Using regular manual shift in the centre column, even I haven't found it hard to change gears when needed in most situations. I drive very little nowadays, and mostly with automatic shift boxes if I can choose, but I did get my license in a manual shift car and drove those almost exclusively for almost twenty years.

    398:

    The US is based on a unit banking system so there are (still) plenty of ma-and-pa type banks, not just the mega, mega BoA and Citi that capture headlines. ... Personally, I think that these banks are (ab)using tradition to leverage some 'free' funds to play with and to avoid paying their customers for that privilege.

    FWIW, I've never experienced a problem getting funds in a timely manner from a "ma-and-pa type bank". It was always one of the "mega, mega" banks, but that's exactly what they were doing, screwing customers to use the money for just a bit longer without paying for it.

    399:
    "...sound the horn, because that will make him jump..."

    It also issues (what I call) a reptile-level challenge to a fight. This is the problem with car horns: it is impossible to use them in a non-aggressive manner, because it is an inherently aggressive sound.

    That just reminded me of something.

    There is still a law on the books in North Carolina that requires you to sound your horn before passing someone on a two lane road (any road where there is not an actual "passing lane").

    Had to re-take the written test when I renewed my license several years ago & that was the only question I missed.

    400:

    "Better" is a very biassed word. More efficiently, yes. More safely, no. I have once saved my life by being able to double-declutch, and several times have come far too close to a serious accident because an automatic did what it wanted to, not what I wanted. Also, automatics generally need a more powerful engine than manuals.

    Also, for people like me (as well as for many people who replace cars when almost new and ones with sky-high insurance), the dominant cost (even in the UK) is NOT the cost of the fuel - over its lifetime, both the capital cost of the car, and the non-fuel recurrent costs are higher. My car costs about 13 grand new, I spend just over a grand on maintenance, insurance and MOT, and under 700 quid a year on petrol. And there are quite a lot of old fogies like me (in that respect) :-)

    401:

    You might find it interesting to read Alexei Panshin's article on Heinlein, or was it an entire book? Anyway, should be available on the web somewhere such as Panshin's own website. The gist of it, as I remember, is that panshin had a brush with Heinlein in the late 1960's that reflected badly on Heinlein and his real as opposed to presented in his fiction, attitude to thinking for yourself and challenging authority. Part of Heinlein's problrmaticness seem to stem from his first wife being radical and leftie and his 2nd being hard core right wing so she helped change the direction of his thoughts in what many of us would see as a bad direction.

    402:

    Re automatic vs manual transmissions in the US... it has become quite common to hear a manual transmission referred to as "the most effective of all anti-theft systems".

    403:

    Interestingly, that was NOT Asimov's experience, though he half expected it.

    404:

    Just a couple of things ...

    I found this article useful and informative:

    https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-democracy-skepticism-infected-american-right/

    And this one just made me scratch my head and ask WTF?

    http://fortune.com/2017/12/02/spacex-falcon-heavy-tesla-roadster-mars/

    405:

    Manual shifts on the steering column are nasty. (In the US we frequently refer to them as "three on the tree,") and driving one of them is a rite of passage for certain categories of gearhead. I had to drive one once and it was not fun at all. Much grinding and profanity ensued, but I did get the big load of my employer's crap to the dump.

    406:

    But Asimov was one of Heinlein's few peers - one of the original greats of the field - a fellow member of the science fiction writers who'd worked in research during WWII, and a Ph.D (to Heinlein's bachelor's degree.) who was probably one of the last genuine polymaths. Is it even possible for someone to seriously imagine winning an argument with Asimov? Starting a feud with Asimov... you'd have to be very, very drunk to think that was a good idea, because by the time you'd recovered from your hangover the next morning he would have written a perfectly-researched 200-page book about how badly you sucked.

    407:

    The time to which he was referring was before he was well-known.

    408:

    Guthrie noted: "You might find it interesting to read Alexei Panshin's article on Heinlein, or was it an entire book?"

    It was a whole book: "Heinlein in dimension". Haven't read it, but if memory serves, it attracted a lot of flack from both sides of the Heinlein fence. The whole text seems to be available here: http://www.panshin.com/critics/Dimension/hdcontents.html

    Elderly Cynic noted (about Heinlein if I've got the threads right): "Interestingly, that was NOT Asimov's experience"

    True, but then they both served in the military together as researchers. Heinlein had more respect for fellow veterans than for avowed pacifists and conscientious objectors, though "Starship Trooper" is far more nuanced on this subject than most readers believe.

    Troutwaxer noted that "Starting a feud with Asimov... you'd have to be very, very drunk to think that was a good idea, because by the time you'd recovered from your hangover the next morning he would have written a perfectly-researched 200-page book about how badly you sucked."

    Heh. Very nicely put.

    409:

    The fact that "Billionaire announces plan to launch car into space" isn't even in the top five most implausible stories of the week shows just how lazy the writing for the 2017 season of "Human race" has become.

    410:

    War criminal drinks poison in court declares, "I'm drinking poison", isn't top 5 implausible.

    Satire is impossible, farce is current affairs, morbid surrealism barely makes an impact any more. We're running out of genres. Soon straight forward action adventure heroism will be the only story possible, which will be good news for the next general to appear on TV denying that there is a coup.

    411:

    In the US an automatic adds between $1,000 and $2,000 to the cost of a consumer transportation vehicle (Corvettes and such excluded) so if you can use less than that in gas over a few years they will start to make more inroads faster in Europe.

    That used to be true here in the U.S., but lately it's becoming harder and harder to find vehicles with manual transmissions. Many American brands no longer even offer the option of a manual transmission, and for those that still do, the manual transmission is now the extra cost option.

    412:

    Sorry, but it is not valid to generalise from a situation arising from a personal impairment to the situation of the population whose lack of said impairment provides the standard by which "impairment" can be defined. (I too now cycle far less than I used to, and my personal version of the argument would be "cycling is never going to recover as a form of transport in the UK because my seriously impaired breathing means I can't cope with gradients significantly steeper than you'd find on a railway"; expressed like that, the invalidity is obvious).

    The real reason it isn't going to "recover" is the same as the reason it declined in the first place: your last sentence is only true for somewhat eclectic values of "best", and most people define the term somewhat differently - ie. in terms of such things as not requiring personal effort for propulsion, having a closed and heated cabin to keep the rain and cold off, being able to carry passengers (especially kids), being able to carry non-trivial amounts of luggage, etc. Therefore they choose a means of transport that provides those advantages over one that doesn't.

    (Electric bicycles only address the first of those points, and are prevented by legislation from doing so in any more than a distinctly half-arsed manner; in particular, they are not allowed to be able to gain altitude faster than roughly 20cm/sec or so with a rider on, so they start to be useless at climbing gradients at about the same point that you'd want them not to be.)

    413:

    Well, yes. Putting both steering and traction forces through the front tyres is one of the well-known downsides of front wheel drive. On the other hand, if it is the rear wheels that lose traction (either braking or accelerating) the back end of the car tends to try and overtake the front end. For this reason most people think that FWD is better overall in slippery conditions, and with the width of tyres fitted as standard these days it may well be true.

    With both manual and automatic transmission you need to be able to disengage the drivetrain, but at the same time it is usually better to be using the drivetrain rather than the friction brakes to decelerate. An automatic may have an advantage here, as the engine braking is gentler than a manual and it doesn't start going g-junk-g-junk as speed gets too low.

    I think the local prejudice against automatics is a bit stronger than you suggest. They have been able to get better gas mileage than manuals in urban driving for decades, and that is also the situation where their other advantages really stand out. Especially for people who do most of their driving in places like London you'd think they'd be the preferred choice, but they aren't, and you still need the excuse of a crippled leg to avoid being viewed as terminally decadent for having one.

    414:

    DOn't forget the weight of the engine over the driving wheels. I've seen rear wheel drive cars fail miserably to get up gentle slopes that I am able to grind up slowly in my front wheel drive.

    415:

    You mean before Heinlein was well known, i.e. before he got older and grumpy and got his 2nd wife who was rabidly right wing? I.e., decades before Panshin has his brush with him? People do change as they get older. In some cases they have clear cognitive impairment, e.g. trump, others it's harder to say why, but there are a number of climatologists who have abandoned science altogether despite doing some decent enough work when they were younger.

    416:

    My weekend-car is a BMW Z4 with manual transmission. I got it as a CPO, after it sat on the dealer's lot for over 3 months -- because nobody wanted to buy a convertible sports car with a stick. (I was so very happy about this.)

    That said, I'm pretty sure that the clutch pedal is going away. Cars will either be automatic, or gearless (e.g., electric), or use a sequential manual gearbox -- traditional manual transmissions will be a shrinking niche. (In the US and equivalent markets, I mean.)

    417:

    Hats off to the vast majority of drivers who seem to be able to herd around an automatic with gears. I've driven a CVT auto and they're pretty good, almost like an electric (almost), but the autos with gears... I see people driving them around and I'm just gobsmacked at their ability.

    I've driven a few RWD ones. As you're going around a corner and start to squeeze on the power for exit, they helpfully disconnect the drive, nicely unsettling the car, making the front wheels push. My reaction to having the front wheels start to scrub in a RWD is to apply more throttle. So as it's in neutral, the engine whizzes up to some ungodly RPM, clunks into gear and promptly unhooks the rear wheels. Presto chango, I'm on the wrong side of the road, facing the way I've just come. If I'm really fast on my reactions, I can back off in time, the car does a little jiggle and the fronts unhook. I still end up on the wrong side of the road, but at least I get to see what I'm about to hit.

    FWD is even more amusing. I used to live at the top of a very steep drive. The boss would sometimes make me drive her car (which I was in no way competent to do). As we drove up the driveway the car would slow down (because for some reason it always decided to start off in 2nd). As it slowed I'd apply more throttle. Helpfully it would slip it into neutral, I'd feel the car coming to a halt and since I wanted to go up the hill, not roll back down, I'd apply more throttle. Then with about 6000 rpm on the tach, it would clunk into gear, the fronts would unhook and burst into wheelspin. I'd back off the throttle to control the wheelspin, so the car, sensing I was doing 80 km/h with no throttle would helpfully change up to 4th gear, the car would come to a complete stop and start to roll backwards down the hill. A good dose of throttle would halt the downward slide, until it noticed that I had full throttle in 4th gear at 0 km/h.... Then the madness would repeat. All the while the boss would be screaming at me "What are you DOING?"

    I never did figure out how you're supposed to drive them without locking them into one gear (which the boss told me wrecks them)

    418:

    It doesn't, as long as you still remember to change gear yourself at an appropriate speed.

    For a long time I fought shy of autos because I was expecting that they would like to change down with a thump half way through a bend and put the back out (ie. I was expecting your RWD experience only not so bad). When I did end up getting one I found (a) it didn't, (b) on the rare occasions it did it changed smoothly with no adverse effect, (c) these days I usually can't be arsed to push it hard enough for that kind of thing to matter anyway, and (d) if I do decide I want to really hammer it I can just lock it into second and it's fine anywhere between 20mph and 80mph. (Borg-Warner BW35 for those who care.)

    They really should not have false neutrals all over the place. It sounds to me as if all the ones you've driven have never had the fluid level checked and are running perilously low on it, at the least.

    419:

    For this reason most people think that FWD is better overall in slippery conditions, and with the width of tyres fitted as standard these days it may well be true.

    As someone who's had the fun of driving on snow, packed snow, sleet, and glare ice at times I'll take front wheel drive auto on all but glare ice. For that I'll prefer a manual RWD. Push in the clutch and gently steer until you get to enough friction to do something else.

    Driving through the non glare ice for a few hours at a time will teach you a lot about friction, momentum, and inertia.

    420:

    Yeah, I'm sure it's just me, no-one else has a problem. Also my formative impressions of autos came from 1960's V8 cars that had... two speed transmissions. (Two! count them!) They probably were out of oil or had loose widgets or something. Also I came from a pretty pure motorcycle background and it took a lot of mind resetting to remember how glacially slow you have to go around corners in a car. Nor did I get much practice driving and was pretty terrible at it.

    Now when I forget to slow down my AWD car does something fancy with the brakes and a light comes on the dash to tell me that it's just saved my life again, and please stop doing that.

    421:

    What it means is that SpaceX doesn't have a paying or even unpaid customer for a fifty-tonne lift launcher, even one that's willing to risk a first-try launch failure.

    My own useful cheap fifty-tonne payload would be a couple of tanks of UDMH and N2O2. Park them in orbit as a fuel stop for anyone launching a planetary probe. Launch the probe into the same orbit, dock, fuel up (proven technology from ISS), change orbit and boost out to the destination. The other alternative would be fifty tonnes of liquid argon for ion drive engines (fifty tonnes of liquid xenon would be a lot more expensive).

    422:

    Yes, cycling (possibly assisted) remains BY FAR the best solution to the short- and medium-range personal transport requirements. UNLESS you want to move something heavy, or worse still, bulky. I'm still cycling & I'm older than you, but thanks the the London Borough of What the Fuck (Look up "LBWF") their "mini-holland" cycling scehme crapping on local car ownners pogrom has made cycling less attractive. I use a small luggage trolley for awkward items & walk, or, it it's really big, use the Great Green Beast - that's what it's there for, after all (amongst other things) When I'm distributing "London Drinker" magazine, I use an old wheeled suitcase, for the first few, then carry the rest to their destinations ( 180 of those can mass up to 15kg ) Ah yes London Drinker

    423:

    "manual shift on the steering column" Euw A US fashion that was breifly popular here in the mid-50's DO NOT GO THERE So many linkages, all with play & "slop" in them, that getting any gear, let alone the correvct one was an expert job, accompanied by large quantities of luck.

    424:

    British Daimlers & RT buses had Pre-Selector gearboxes. Interesting to drive - I've only done so once, & for quite a short distance.

    425:

    The answer to that set of problems & the RWD ones, is, of course 4WD ( like mine, of course! ) Incidentally, about 5 years back we had a breif heavy snowfall, and the approach to the car-park space outside the hall where we did dance practice was a breif uphill - I got in, noo problem, didn't even think about it, frankly. But the next person in, with an almost-new nice Skoda had his front wheels spinning & couldn't get in. An rwd car might have made it, fwd, no way.

    426:

    “I came from a pretty pure motorcycle background and it took a lot of mind resetting to remember how glacially slow you have to go around corners in a car. ”

    It constantly surprises me how often I hear this.

    Speaking as somebody with about 10 years experience of being a very ordinary club level motorcycle road racer, either you’re doing it wrong or have only driven very badly broken cars. Four large contact patches trump two small small contact patches every time, and that applies even when you’re directly and contemporaneously comparing a not especially sporting saloon car (like say a Mercedes C200) with a state of the art (at the time) sports bike (like say a K6 Suzuki GSXR750). Throw something more capable (like say an Audi A4 quattro sport) in on the car side and the difference in cornering speed safely attainable isn’t even funny, even when you’ve got a wife, two children, and a weeks worth of camping kit in the car with you...

    427:

    Unable to gain altitude faster than roughly 20cm/sec sounds terrible. But out in the real world (unless you live in the Alps or Edinburgh), a UK E-Bicycle means never going below 10mph, maintaining 15mph on the flat and >20 downhill without getting out of breath or breaking a sweat. And regardless of wind direction. And in typical urban and sub-urban UK, you'll be quicker than any other vehicle in traffic. That's enough, and if you need more than that then get a moped. If capitalism has been reasonably good to you and you have off street parking with a power point, it's easy to end up with several bicycles, an E-Bike, a scooter, sports M/C and a car. And I find the vehicle that gets used the most is the E-Bike because almost all journeys are <5 miles and involve no more than 2 grocery bags.

    426. I agree but with one proviso. Using 75% of the (dry) cornering performance envelope of a motorcycle feels effortless. While 75% of the car's envelope feels dangerous and throws the passengers around. Maybe we should all just slow down a bit?
    428:

    "A working distributed cryptocurrency model is inimical to the interests of billionaire monopolists who want to get rich by imposing rent-seeking practices on the immobilized peasantry "

    A working distributed cryptocurrency model is also inimical to: - fair taxation - preventing fencing of stolen goods - preventing the buying and selling of illegal weapons - preventing drug dealing, money laundering, etc, etc

    Maybe I'm being naive, but I don't see that governments have any reason to want that.

    And when govts and billionaire monopolists both have reasons to oppose something... well.

    429:

    Hehehe.

    Audi Quattro!

    Hehehehee

    You have no idea how bad cars can be.

    My Mum who was a non-driver bought me cars in order to drive her around. The first of which was an EJ station wagon. It was given to her and she was ripped off getting it for free. It rolled around on ancient crossply tyres. Many years later a girlfriends father, who had raced them (!!!!) for Holden in the early 60's told me that the motor made 32 hp on the engine dyno. So basically you had to not slow down for corners because it took so much to get the speed back. Not that you really could slow down much. If I remember right, twin leading shoe drum brakes at the front, (which didn't work at all in reverse). At the time I regularly pulling stoppies on an RD350LC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_EJ

    That was followed by the mighty V8 Holden Brougham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Brougham V8 with two speed auto, also running crossply tyres. It handled like a motorboat in a confused sea. There was no identifiable damping left on any wheel and the power steering gave no feedback at all and would cut in and out randomly. It had a limited slip diff, which just meant that it would unhook both back wheels at the same time. I managed to spin it 1 1/2 rotations on a straight wet road. I'm not quite sure what bike I had at that time (several, 600 Pantah?) but my Brother was getting about on an RZ500 so about 1985ish. I remember he had the RZ because my mother's friends were giving her a hard time for having got a 'V8' for the 'children' to drive. Too much power you know. We lived on a hill, and my brother used it as a dyno and called it the 'phone box run'. So to check how the sheer power of the V8 compared, we tried the Brougham on that run and it passed the phone box at 70 km/h. The RZ500 was touching 200 km/h at the same spot. I 'followed' (wallowed along in his wake) on one phonebox run. There's a kink half way up and the RZ was sliding through the kink. The Brougham got through ok, unsettled but not actually sliding, but being 100 km/h slower probably helped a lot.

    Through both of those cars I sometimes drove my Great Aunt's Datsun 120Y which was much more modern than the Holdens. Because it was driven by the proverbial little old lady it still rolled around on the original tyres, now well over a decade old. I vividly remember going through a bend and having the back start to gradually slide out. I started to worry as I knew my Brother was following on his bike. I glanced at the mirror. I could see my Brother following on his RD350LC. He wasn't bothering to hold the handlebars and was almost perfectly straight up and down.

    So my experiences with autos were tainted by driving horrible old cars that had been poorly maintained and which I drove like a daft teenager.

    Cars are completely different now of course.

    430:

    My weekend-car is a BMW Z4 with manual transmission.

    I bought a second hand Jeep Liberty a couple of weeks ago. I'd been looking for one for a while (more than a year), but this was the first I'd found with a manual transmission. Not a "weekend-car" as such, but meant for National Parks and other scenic locations where 4WD is required for access.

    My "daily driver" continues to be a Ford Focus Wagon - FWD w/5-spd. That one only took me nine months to find.

    431:

    I wasn't. It's based on enquiring and observing why people don't cycle over many decades. My EFFECTIVE balance is better than most older people's (i.e. over 60), because a lifetime of adaptation counters my basic handicap. My point was that the acceptance of being forced onto psychle farcilities (including the pavement and gutter) will prevent any real recovery. I could explain why, in detail, but it's a diversion.

    432:

    Before Asimov was well-known. I can't remember where I read what he said.

    433:

    Rand biographies

    Short version: Ayn Rand was a bright middle-class Russian girl who had the bad luck to hit her mid-to-late teens—the rebellious years—in Moscow during the Communist revolution. She rebelled, and made her way to the USA, and her teenage rebellion ossified. To be fair, her class background made her ripe for anti-Communism (expropriation of your home and being told you're a class enemy will probably do that), and she made her home in a nation undergoing periodic red scares on a level we can only understand today by reaching for militant islamism as a metaphor, but still: call her the 1930s Ann Coulter and have done with her.

    Heinlein, on the other hand ...

    Heinlein defies easy thumbnails, but can reasonably be described as "complex, and changed his beliefs as he aged".

    Teenage Bob wanted to be an astronomer, but there were no university options open to him, so he joined the Navy as a cadet and went to Annapolis (hint: celestial navigation) then ended up as a navy officer.

    Teenage Bob was into free love (and had an early marriage — fornication being illegal in those days — that he later swept under the rug). He appears to have caught a nasty STI that got him invalided out of the Navy and probably rendered him sterile, which in turn may have influenced his ideas about women and children that turned up later in his writing.

    Post-Naval Bob was a left wing political activist who ran for the California State Senate. Post-Naval Bob wrote letters to the newspaper editors that got him deemed unsuitable for Navy service during the second world war because he was probably a communist sympathizer or something.

    Post-Naval Bob got into writing to make money, was in a love triangle with L. Ron Hubbard, knew Jack Parsons (inventor of rocket fuels, founder of JPL, thelemite) and oh dear god it gets complex.

    Then his second marriage disintegrated and he met Virginia, who seems to have been an old-school republican, and infected him with a bunch of libertarian bullshit—although it was a direction he was leaning in anyway.

    Oh, and he was into unreliable narrators and post-modern firework shows all along.

    The point is, you can't read Heinlein (should you wish to do so) without taking into account both which epoch of Heinlein you're reading, and trying to work out what the hidden message might be, and also whether he's bullshitting for real or poking fun at the bullshit du jour. If you take him at face value, then anything after 1955 is libertarian wank: except taking Heinlein at face value mean you tied your shoelaces together before the starting gun fired.

    434:

    By "manual shift on the steering column" do you mean an automatic gearbox? Or a manual transmission with a clutch pedal and all, with the gearstick somewhere highly inappropriate (unless it's a Citroen 2CV)?

    435:

    You mean before Heinlein was well known, i.e. before he got older and grumpy and got his 2nd wife who was rabidly right wing?

    Make that his third wife. #1 was airbrushed out of history. (Married in the mid-1920s, divorced by the early 1930s.)

    436:

    I think that "nobody above the law" would prevent the plutocrat from being able to take that special position; and "equality before the law" would elevate the peasants to the same level as the plutocrat. In any case it's a literary and evocative statement and not a treatise on political philosophy. And in any case, if you're going to object to it, you could raise the same objection to Mr. Stross, substituting in the party member for the plutocrat; that's certainly a known political failure mode, and one his imagined society seems very close to falling into.

    Though I would also note that as a libertarian, I don't believe that "the law" is whatever set of rules the people in power choose to enact. I think that there are objectively valid principles of law, just as there are objectively valid principles of engineering or medicine. Claiming that you have the gold, or the gun, or the majority of the votes, and you get to set those principles aside and make whatever rules you want, and cannot be called to account, has led to some really ugly places. This is really a political version of the question in Plato's Euthyphro.

    437:

    It's been a while since I read the two-volume biography, but I thought the first marriage lasted a lot less time than that, one measured in months rather than years.

    438:

    See also the Gupta/Zuma scandal, highlighted in this weeks FT comic

    439:

    Weirdly enough, column shift manuals were considered a safety innovation when a floor shift in a car without seatbelts sometimes impaled the occupants in a collision, see Ralph Nader's "Unsafe At Any Speed" for background. And they weren't that bad to use, until they got loose with wear... but I don't miss them.

    440:

    All this device can do is call the bank server, and access your account over a one time-pad encrypted link. If you manage to do enough banking to go through a gigabyte of network activity.. well, your phone will require replacing from age before that, so... The server has the matching pad copy for each customer device, and since all activity is internal to the bank, noone can trace any of it. Or read it. You can tell someone is a customer, sure, but with any decent size of customer base and trivial random delays on transactions and / or just doing all transactions as timed operations

    Then you've reinvented central banking. Perhaps someone outside of the central bank can't tell what's going on, but a single break or insider in the central bank, and the whole system is exposed.

    There's another problem, and I'm not comfortable that BTC or other cryptocurrencies address it, namely that if an attacker against the system has enough money, they can do a pretty good job of mapping out transactions simply by doing transactions with people and using them to build up a massive set of cribs for traffic analysis. Let's suppose that I'm the FBI and I had the CIA help me steal a gigantic number of BTC. So, now I want to build evidence against some online drug seller: simple I buy drugs. At exactly 01:09am I bought $400 worth of drugs. Following that, this particular account did a set of transactions at 01:10am. Then I bought $500 worth of drugs at 03:03am and the same account did a similar set of transactions at 03:04am. If I have enough money to spend that way, I can map out an entire economy. Bitcoins don't have a particular serial number that can be tracked but the entire purpose of "money" is to engage in meaningful transactions and meaningful transactions can be tracked; that's what a transaction is. I'm aware that transactions get pooled together, which would make them a bit harder to track in this manner but then it's just a matter of having enough BTC to have a high likelihood that you're most of the transactions in the pool.

    441:

    Also: what happens if SHA256 turns out to have collisions?

    442:

    Naw. The rear wheels on my 2015 Prius still come out from under me when I stop fast... the battery under the back seat makes sure of that! The more things change...

    443:

    I was not trying to be innovative, rather the reverse, that is, "What is the minimum-complexity solve for the engineering problem of cryptographic secure transactions". This model has one obvious weakness -
    physical possession of the central server - but that beats the ever living daylight out of the many problems more complicated schemes have. There is, for example no "Perhaps" about the inability of outside actors reading traffic - That is a mathematical certainty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad .... Actually I am very puzzled one time pads have not seen abundant use for communications yet -

    All the practical problems with them have been rendered negligible by the advent of cheap large scale storage. Do firms that file a buisness plan along the lines of "Sell one time pad-encryption systems for commercial secrecy uses" getting a pointed visit from intelligence agency goons or something?

    444:

    "Or a manual transmission with a clutch pedal and all..."

    Yes, with the gearshift lever attached to the steering column in the same place as a modern automatic gearshift. Usually has a weird shifting pattern which is much too easy to accidentally shift into reverse or from first to third, and sometimes got weirdly stuck between gears. It was frequently called a "three on the tree" with a usage that goes something like this: "My first car was a used '55 Chevy pickup truck with a broady knob* and three on the tree. Ugly old thing, but my girl and I had a lot of fun!"

    • Basically a doorknob attached to a steering wheel for extra leverage against a non-power-steering car. Due to their usefulness in radical maneuvers, they are now highly illegal. I have no idea if they were ever available in the U.K.
    445:

    Clutch, brake, and gas on the floor. Along with dimmer switch for headlights and maybe a starter for some pickups and other things before the 60s. Oh yeah, the foot engaged emergency brake on the far left in the area of the dimmer switch. The release was almost always very inconveniently located under the dash on the far left.

    Remember this is for cars with the operator on the left side. Starting and getting going with one of these could be interesting if on a hill.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=3+on+the+column&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiV5Z-3u-7XAhWRRt8KHeD_AMoQ_AUICigB&biw=1181&bih=542

    I guess you are too young or they moved to all floor shifting for manuals in Europe before the US did. But "back in the day", into the 60s and maybe the 70s when many non performance case had manual transmissions, families wanted bench seats front and back so the column was the location for the shift controls.

    446:

    Weirdly enough, column shift manuals were considered a safety innovation when a floor shift in a car without seatbelts sometimes impaled the occupants in a collision

    Of course I seem to remember that those cars with the "safer" column shifting also tended to have a metal dash with maybe a very thin layer of padding. But a sharp trim edge for you to whack you face or head on.

    447:

    And back to my initial point.

    If driver is on the left side of the car and your making a left turn not from a stop you will likely be:

  • Using your left arm to rotate the wheel to keep the car "in it's lane".
  • Using your right arm to move the shifter "up" from 3rd to 2nd or down and "in" from 2nd to 1st.
  • Using your left foot to handle the clutch.
  • Using your right foot to apply braking or gas as needed to keep the speed changes smooth and match engine speed to something close to what the transmission is expecting. Synchronizers are great but not magic.
  • All while your are using your eyes to watch for opposing traffic and things in your new lane you could see when approaching the intersection. And stay in "your lane".

    448:

    Totally changing the subject.

    I have a Barclays Bank Credit card (from the US subsidiary) and it is the only card I have (out of 20 or more) that will not let me pick to not use paper statements.

    Is there something in UK law or banking culture that prevents this?

    449:

    Key management with OTPs is hard. It's possible to wrap automation around it, of course, but we've seen (per the Vault 7 disclosures) that NSA is pretty aggressively compromising some sources of 'randomness' - I was surprised that there wasn't more forehead-slapping going on around the "change the NTP server in smart TVs" code (guess where they get their 'random'ness?)

    Anyhow, I agree with you (mostly) and I'm also a fan of OTPs. So much so that I'm the author of the official OTP FAQ. But ... shhh!

    Do firms that file a buisness plan along the lines of "Sell one time pad-encryption systems for commercial secrecy uses" getting a pointed visit from intelligence agency goons or something?

    Speaking from experience of a limited sort, no. Nobody would get much of a business plan going based on OTPs. I've had lots of meetings with venture capitalists and most of them are busy funding whatever the mainstream is going after. If I had to listen to one more VC say "we are interested in blockchain" I swear I was going to throw up my own asshole.

    450:

    BTW, the current hot thing is to infect people's systems with bitcoin miners. There are a variety of those going around, and Ars Technica has some good articles about what's happening there. Short form: your google game android app may be slow and your battery life may go turdwise because your phone is mining monero for someone. Also, if your browser starts getting slow, you may have gone to a site that installed a bitcoin mining app running in your browser.

    To OGH's point about energy use, now they are moving down the efficiency scale.

    451:

    We're both kinda-sorta correct: Heinlein's first marriage lasted only months, but it took a few years for the divorce to come through.

    452:

    There is a site that shows which countries use less electricity than Bitcoin:

    http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/bitcoin-consumes-more-energy-than-159-individual-countries

    Apparently the Bitcoin Singularity is approaching:

    The amount of electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining is already huge, but is still rising fast. In a 30-day period from past October to November, it increased by just under 30%. At this rate (and assuming no new energy-generating capacity is added), Bitcoin mining will require all the electricity produced in the U.S. by July 2019, and all the electricity produced in the entire world by February 2020.
    453:

    I never saw a column-mounted gearshift until I rented the wrong car in the USA that one time. The nearest was the 2CV, with the dash-mounted shift lever.

    Also, floor-mounted parking brakes? That's utterly surreal; all cars and vans in the UK go with a handle you yank on between the seats, unless they've changed in the past few years. (I know some newer models switched to an electrical system for the hand brake, rather than a cable, but it's still controlled by a lever.)

    454:

    The car I learnt to drive on, I did all that, plus I gave hand signals out the window.

    Yorkshire And I had to get up before I went to bed /Yorkshire

    455:

    this is on topic ...

    Nazis drivin of paypal etc., using more bitoivn and becoming rich all of a sudden.

    https://mic.com/articles/186438/neo-nazi-wealth-is-rapidly-growing-why-bitcoin

    Sadly, the article does not (yet) go into much depths.

    456:

    Charlie, thanks for the additional info on Rand and Heinlein. Like most of us, they were complex people. And yes, I do account for their cultural context and upbringing.

    Charlie noted: "I never saw a column-mounted gearshift until I rented the wrong car in the USA that one time."

    They were a common design for automatic transmissions for many North American brands for many years. I remember being surprised the first time I saw a floor-mounted transmission. (I learned manual transmission skills a couple decades after I started driving.)

    Charlie: "Also, floor-mounted parking brakes? That's utterly surreal; all cars and vans in the UK go with a handle you yank on between the seats, unless they've changed in the past few years."

    My Prius has one, and I don't like it at all -- much prefer the lever; among other things, you could use it for emergency braking if the main brake failed. Far too easy to stamp on the floor pedal accidentally. I'm a biggish guy, and ours is a sufficiently old Prius that it hadn't yet been adapted tgo accommodate North American leg lengths. It's particularly awkward in winter, while wearing clunky winter boots to keep from losing one's feet to frostbite.

    457:

    They were fairly common at one time Citroen was particularly keen on them, but I can't remember which others had them. We had a Citroen with one, and there wasn't a problem, after the initial adaptation from floor shift - which was no worse than the adaptation from long gear levers to short ones!

    458:

    Well, my father-in-law has a Mercedes, which is probably something like a decade old, and it has a parking brake which is engaged by a floor pedal on the far left and released by a handle, also on the left side of the instrument panel. It has also automatic transmission. So, at least they are sometimes seen in European cars in Europe, but they're not common by any means. It's the first car I have driven with such an arrangement.

    459:

    Oops. I forgot to say that dash-mounted (well, usually under the dashboard) handbrakes were quite common at one stage.

    460:

    Yeah. And I am tall enough that, in order to not bash the steering wheel, column controls and gear lever with my knees, my shoulders have to be behind the door column - I had to take the test remembering not to do something inappropriate my moving my knees :-)

    Objoke about Parliament omitted ....

    461:

    The Vauxhall Victor had a bench front seat and a column-mounted manual gearshift. Turns out that one possible reason for the shift being nigh unusable is that some of the bolts and bushes are missing altogether...

    Another way to allow for a bench front seat is to have a floor-mounted gear lever that actually goes straight into the gearbox, which means it comes through the floor right at the front under the dash and you have a long lever pointing backwards at an angle. (Usually there is a horizontal thing running backwards from the top of the gearbox with the gear lever sticking up out of the back end of it in between the seats. Sometimes a directly-connected gear lever is used not to allow for a bench front seat, but simply so as not to have to bother with the thing.)

    Gearshift on the dash is probably a French idiosyncrasy; there was some Renault that had that too.

    Variant parking brake controls on UK vehicles, oh yes. Foot operated, or hand operated with a foot operated release. Or a big toggle under the dash that you pull out by hand about a foot to apply and turn sideways to release. Or a normal floor-mounted hand lever but in between the driver's seat and the door instead of in the middle, which is what my car has. Sometimes things like this are because you don't use the parking brake while actually driving so it doesn't matter if it's less accessible but it is nice not to have that great big lever sticking up in between the seats and getting in the way (the advantage is more noticeable on cars which do not put all sorts of other cack there as well like modern ones do); sometimes it's because the car is intended to evoke non-highway driving styles where you do use the parking brake while in motion so it's footy* to have it on another pedal. Sometimes it is to facilitate having a bench front seat. The abovementioned Victor did one of these things, but I can't remember which.

    * Like "handy", but referring to something operated with the hind limbs.

    462:

    Nah. They can put anything they want into the contract - it's your choice whether to sign it. Oh, all the banks have the same restrictive practices (by PURE chance)? Don't use a bank, then. That's UK law in a nutshell.

    463:

    Also, floor-mounted parking brakes? That's utterly surreal; all cars and vans in the UK go with a handle you yank on between the seats

    My first car was a 1966 Chrysler Valiant. Parking brake was a pedal on the far left of the floor, with the release lever at the bottom of the dash above it. Both front and back seats were bench seats, so there was no 'between the seats' to put it.

    464:

    My SAAB 95 and later SAAB 96 both had four-speed manual shifts mounted on the steering column. Plus the centrifugal clutch, which I loved to bits - take your foot off the power, and it coasted.

    465:

    I'm a fan of Strange Maps - thanks. Also, it shows that guvmints are going to ahve to STAMP HARD on BTC & fairly soon. Is that a deliberate part of the design, showing how "evil" guvmints are interfering with our fake Libertarian "freedom"? This just gets twistier by the minute ....

    466:

    But do you find all that stuff actually matters? I found it a problem when first learning to drive, but by the same token the first "important and difficult" thing that it was necessary to learn was the ability to make all those movements instinctively without having to think about it. Once I had that under my belt I could then concentrate on all the purely mental stuff about guiding the car down the road and allowing for other traffic.

    It's the same sort of thing as the use of a computer keyboard or a musical instrument becoming physically automatic so you don't have to think about what your fingers are doing and can concentrate purely on the programming/music.

    And having learned it, I find it is a very transferrable ability - it takes no more than a quick look round the cabin and wiggle of the controls for me to adjust to the different positioning and characteristics of the controls of an unfamiliar car, even when the differences are quite large.

    It's not a completely insignificant factor, otherwise I would not perceive that one of the massively attractive things about a motorbike is that it feels so much like an extension of your body in a way that a car never does. But it is insignificant enough to be completely automatic and never require me to think about it. I dread to imagine how difficult I would find driving if that was not the case.

    467:

    More than that. If that rate of increase is remotely accurate I'd expect responses like vigilante groups going round sledgehammering bitcoin rigs because they don't like eating uncooked food in the dark and the cold.

    468:

    Uhm... I just realized. There is one, very large, and very rich customer for one time pad crypto. Politicians keep asking for secure cryptography with government back doors in them. ... That is, in fact, doable with one time pads. Forget the commercial market, we are killing it via abuse of shelling point reasoning.

    The government sets up large scale manufacture of one time pads, and related secure hardware /software for communication. This should be easily paid for out of the security budgets, because this entire scheme will secure the entire nation from several whole classes of intelligence threat. Then you set up a star topology network, with a clear legal framework for when the government is permitted to access traffic that goes over it, and a requirement that they publish that they have done so a maximum of one year after the fact. Then everyone gets their own terabyte pad and a universal address book. Bye, bye email. Bye bye lesser forms of crypto, because, well, nobody is going to buy any when they already have a form which is proof against everything except a court order. Want to communicate with your bank? One time mail. Mail corporate documents? One time mail.

    You cant impersonate people over this form of communication, nor intercept it. So, basically, for everything that involves money.. Also, trivial to prevent spam on it, too. Uhm. I should cost this out, right?

    ... Also, I have this dreadful feeling my risk of murder by irate libertarian just hit 0.2 percent..

    469:

    much prefer the lever; among other things, you could use it for emergency braking if the main brake failed

    One of those other things was getting a manual transmission car out of a steep uphill parallel parking space. Left foot on the clutch, right foot on the accelerator, left hand on the steering wheel, right hand on the parking brake lever. Apply gas, ease up on the clutch, let the brake lever down, all in a somewhat coordinated manner.

    A long while ago I had to do that a bit in San Francisco and was quite proud of myself that I actually managed to make it work.

    470:

    I think it's just Barclays being wankers. I don't have a bank account, but I do know that we had something called "First Direct" that did everything online (or on the phone), which began ages ago and others have imitated it since. And I have also noticed that when interacting with non-banking organisations in a way that involves bills or statements it can be a noticeable bugger trying to get them to do stuff on paper (ie. the opposite of what you're trying to do).

    471:

    Yeah, right :-( 'A secure legal framework'? And who enforces that? A while back, the UK government was telling academics that we were going to have to used signed Email, using a trusted third party mechanism. I helped to kill it (footsoldier level) by saying in a loud voice at a meeting between government and academia that I wasn't prepared to trust anyone that the government trusts - there was quite a lot of "hear, hear" from the audience.

    472:

    Abusing it is tempting, but not remotely as useful as having it be trusted. - Because if it is, your entire economy become secure against corporate espionage and a bunch of other information hazards. Most of what the KGB did for its entire existence under that acronym was corporate espionage, and I strongly suspect the US security apparatus is currently pulling the same shit. Having security the NSA cant crack would put a stop to that.

    So it is in the enlightened self-interest of the government putting this together to make it trustworthy, and that is doable by measures like enforcing maximum transparency at the data centers.

    Or do it at an international level - this is the sort of bureaucracy that would fit well in a tower in Brussels, and while all the governments funding it would want the court order backdoor, none of them would trust any of the others with secret access, so that way it should be politically secure too.

    Also, it does not need to be mandatory - As I said, if it exists, it becomes a shelling point - most IT departments are lazy, and will not go out and buy software packages that might have been compromised by hostile powers east or west if they already have a published-source mathematically secure solution at hand. That would require both work and spending money.

    473:

    And if an adversary does manage to get access to the secure data centre containing the master copies of the OTPs then they get everything.

    There's no limit to the amount of effort it would be worth expending for that.

    474:

    .. If a hostile power is militarily occupying Brussels, we have bigger problems than the email histories of the past couple of years. You do realize you are talking about a trainload of hard drives? Compromising the star in the network is only useful if you can do so covertly, which is easy to make essentially impossible.

    475:

    Floor mounted parking brakes with a dash handle release have been a feature in the bigger Mercs for years now. I’m surprised yours doesn’t have it.

    We had an 05 c class estate that had it and that model was released in 01 or 02. I have a suspicion they may change back to a normal handbrake for some markets though.

    They are still doing it as well, our newer E has it too.

    476:

    You can access virtually anything covertly. You just give the right person 10x their normal annual pay. If necessary do the same for a couple of people to ensure they look the other way at the appropriate time.

    477:

    If a hostile power is militarily occupying Brussels...

    You're right, that's unlikely.

    Two much more probably situations:

    The obvious problem is that corrupt and/or incompetent behaviour gives hackers undetected access to the system. Depending on the fine print that access may be undetected for a long period, and different hackers will have access to different subsets of the system. Working out what was leaked, by whom, and wen will be tricky. It's likely that "loss" of critical OTP blocks will make decrypting the logs impossible.

    A slightly worse problem would be deliberate destruction or corruption of data by hostile actors. Probably state actors who discover that, oh I dunno, maybe something important was transmitted over a commercial email service rather than through state-controlled services no subject to the communal OTP sewer. Sorry, service. The words are so similar :)

    Either way you now have the problem that parts of the OTP library are inaccessible, and parts compromised.

    478:

    Yeah, when I rented a car in the US, it had a foot operated handbrake - another pedal where the automatic footrest would be, and a hand operated release under the dash.

    Took a bit of getting used to, especially for hill starts, but works. Also requires a bit of juggling feet to get the clutch and brake right. Great for doing 180s in a snowy carpark.

    On the other hand, the only column shifts I've ever seen have been on Citroens. I figured they were french weirdness. Although the classic 70s Holden Commodore with the full bench seat might have had one too iirc.

    479:

    Ehh.. you do not need to label the disks in the infinite server racks by name, you know.

    So you bribe enough employees to covertly copy someones key. There are actually ways to make that really difficult (.. see, for a depressing example, the remarkable lack of bribed border guards the iron curtain had) but lets say you manage it. You are bribing a lot of well paid professionals in the security business, including the guards checking them for contraband on the way in and out, and the people maintaining the umpteen-Tesla magnets on the employee entrance, but say you spend money like water and manage.

    There are six hundred million of them. Nobody working in the building needs to know which one is which. So now you have to bribe the people at the entirely separate facility that has the index.

    Picking a random one just gets you Julia in Estonias hot and heavy picture exchanges with her boyfriend. They occasionally show nipple.

    For important and centralized systems, physical security is a thing that can be done for all scenarios barring massively overwhelming force. And you can design the place to burn to the ground in the event of that happening.

    480:

    Not to mention, why would the server racks even have ports for the copying of things? If you get a court order for someones mail, you yank the entire drive. Okay, the disruption of service tells the suspect in question that they are being investigated, but if the system is not intended to allow covert snooping in the first place, that is a feature, not a bug. So your bribed employees are bringing in soldering irons and electronics?

    481:

    Pulling away uphill from a standing start using accelerator, clutch and hand brake is part of the British driving test. Rolling back even slightly will take points off, rolling back significantly will be an immediate fail. This is the test for a manual shift car, the test for an automatic is easier but it does not qualify you to drive a manual afterwards.

    482:

    By "manual shift on the steering column" do you mean an automatic gearbox? Or a manual transmission with a clutch pedal and all, with the gearstick somewhere highly inappropriate (unless it's a Citroen 2CV)?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_transmission#Column-mounted_shifter

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piZ-TRoB7p8

    That was the "standard" transmission in American automobiles from the late-30s up through the early-70s. I believe American manufacturers began offering automatic transmissions as an option beginning right after World War 2.

    By the mid-60s, even though the 3-speed manual was still "standard", most American cars were sold with automatic transmissions.

    483:

    Bribery by state actors works differently. Right now South Korea doesn't want 5 million North Vietnamese refugees any more than West Germany wanted East German ones, so the borders can be slightly porous but both sides want that kept small. But when it's not "millions of people" but a small, identifiable set of people (likely less than a thousand), it's quite reasonable to offer each of them a hundred million dollars worth of whatever they want. And when it's one of the major investagory states doing the bribing, part of the value delivered can be a poor or misdirected investigation. "retire to New Zealand a very rich person" is something that the US or German governments could probably arrange for a thousand people. And now the Russians own the OTP database... the whole thing.

    Trying to pretend that you can nail down access is a fools game. The point of this thing is that hundreds of organisations all over the world have fast access to it. That is the entire point of it, it will be justified by the cliche "terrorist with a bomb" scenario, so court orders will be needed but no appeals will be permitted/possible, and there will most definitely not be any kind of independent public hearing in a third country (Weeks! Months! not minutes)

    484:

    From another angle: you suggest a distributed set of data centres full of write-only storage. That massively increases the cost, because you're demanding a thing that's possible but doesn't currently exist so everything will be bespoke.

    OTOH, it's likely everything will be bespoke anyway since you're going to need to start by auditing the silicon and work up from there. It would be sad if data was lost, just as much as it would be sad if it leaked. So auditing is going to be necessary as well as fraught. On the one hand, terrorism investigations will rely on it (that's the whole point), but on the other it's got to come out of someone's budget so there will be a lot of pressure to make it cheap (in the "billions of dollars a year" sense of cheap).

    I suspect the connection will also be interesting, since we don't really have a model for secure one-way transmission of data over the internet. UDP streaming perhaps comes closest. But since this is a situation where absolutely no data leakage can be permitted you run the risk of it being a circular process (I transmit a 1TB OTP by encrypting it using 1TB or OTP data). Otherwise I transmit a copy of my OTP, that gets intercepted and suddenly ... security? What security?

    Then patches and updates. When the system is compromised by a bug, what happens? How do you update every client device when a key part of the system is compromised? By "device", what do you mean - GSM uses encryption, so presumably anything that uses GSM, right down the the add-in card in my USB wireless internet dongle... it cost less than $20, how do I update the firmware? If I just replace it, who pays?

    As I said, losing the keys to the log files or other control systems will be at least as damaging as losing a specific set of keys. "you want record #12345678901234567890? Ah, that's on disk error, data not found"... "but the terrorists!"

    485:

    Also, floor-mounted parking brakes? That's utterly surreal; ...

    When I first learned to drive it wasn't even called a "parking brake". It was the "hand brake" or "emergency brake" and it was located below the dashboard next to the driver's door. You engaged the brake by pulling out on the handle. It had some kind of a ratchet arrangement that kept it tight. To release the hand brake you had to turn the handle to unlock it.

    Worked sort of similar to the locking choke on an MG ... except that instead of turn to lock, it was turn to unlock (and release).

    http://av8r.smugmug.com/Other/MG-Midget/DSCF0088/738881083_7bpSS-M.jpg

    With automatic transmissions becoming more common, manufacturers changed over to a pedal you stepped on to apply the brake & there was a handle you pulled to release it. That's when they started calling it a parking brake.

    486:

    The handle just below the dash between the heater controls and the radio is the handbrake in this old Chevrolet.

    http://cdn.barrett-jackson.com/staging/carlist/items/Fullsize/Cars/71091/71091_Interior_Web.jpg

    487:

    Um, North Vietnam? Try North Korea.

    That's the trivial problem. There are some less-trivial ones.

    One is that Seoul is 23 miles from the border, Pyongyang is 89 miles from the border, and there's enough firepower aimed on both sides to basically re-fight WWII (500,000 artillery shells on the northern side facing south, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia).

    As for reunification, both sides have been talking about it, quietly, for pushing 50 years by now. Aside from the ruling junta on the northern side, the big problem is that China doesn't want a US client-state snuggled up on its border, any more than Russia does, and given the way the US acts right now, I have trouble blaming them.

    Right now, the peaceful to unification is if the US squanders its military and pisses off South Korea and Japan enough that they decide that China is a more reliable senior partner. At that point, it's quite likely that Chinese support for North Korea falls apart, the Koreas reunify as a Chinese client state, and things go on from there.

    The less peaceful track may come sooner, because I don't think North Korea had a good harvest this year. They're already swept by fairly frequent famines, and if things get too much worse, they might decide to launch a war simply because it's preferable (for the ruling Junta) to try to take over South Korea and pay the butcher's bill, rather than being overthrown by mobs of their own. This could also happen if China and the US don't send them food aid. It's an awkward place to be (food being cheaper than fighting), but I'm not sure if the current US administration is capable of doing the calculus that feeding them is more cost-effective than attempting to beat them. The Seoul Blue House is perfectly capable of that calculus, thank you very much.

    488:

    Would this be fixed with the removal of a cap on max BTC? It seems any block-chain based service has to incentivise "mining", and for a currency that's just a bit of extra built-in inflation. But the arbitrary cap and "difficulty" are self-limiting. That aside, I just don't see why anyone is attracted to a currency because it doesn't have Fiat backing. It seems a complete non-sequitur, especially when BTC is compared to "digital gold", a seeming reference to gold as a hard currency value store. But BTC is anything but hard, and this past year's high-profile busts show the other libertarian shiboleth of "anonymous" has also been stripped away from the BTC mythos.

    489:

    North Vietnam? Try North Korea.

    Brainfart. The rest of your post I agree with, but that's not really my point about porous borders or otherwise. Someone could definitely suborn border guards (as they do in MexicUs), but the benefit would be limited and the governments would not approve (cf the US is dependent on cheap labour and points south love the remittances)..

    The rumor I saw that the latest Saudi dictaking is talking to Kushner and it might be about the Saudis supporting a Palestinian state directly and likely militarily is causing brown pants in various places... that strikes me as a much more fraught de-unification. If Greater Israel is split into two warring states, one of whom is an ally of the US and one is a spawn of an ally, that makes for exciting politics. My conern is that it might turn out to be worse for Palestinians than the current occupation.

    490:

    Would this be fixed with the removal of a cap on max BTC?

    No, because bitcoin is based on a competition to burn resources. Control goes to whoever can burn the most (50%+1 of the computing power), so everyone involved has a strong incentive to burn as much as they can in order to prevent anyone else getting 50%+1. Twiddling the numbers so that you could get 50% with a 10W system would just lead to an explosing of mess as everyone with 10W available tried to take over. That first post-reset round would either kill Bitcoin, or the feedback system would kick in and the next round would be based on the computation available and we'd be right back where we are now very quickly.

    The rescue will be via "proof of work doesn't have to be computation" in some form. For example, it could be via tamagotchi - every (random minutes) you have to enter your PIN on your bitcoin wallet and answer a simple question. Presumably only for 12 hours a day, but that would scale via people being paid to press buttons, and if you also made it scale with the number of coins in the wallet outsourcing would become risky (pay some peon $1 a day to do it, sure, but to get value out of that you need to supply the peon with thousands of dollars of bitcoin in the wallet they can unlock... it's a criminological dilemma :)

    491:

    Know what you mean on the manual brakes... I live stateside, and so know they are a thing. I refuse; Given such a vehicle, I ignore the floor mount and yank hard on the center-mounted anything. Backseat passengers must duck & cover against incoming miscellaneous shrapnel à la GPS sets, charging cables, the occasional hot coffee, etc.

    492:

    The government sets up large scale manufacture of one time pads, and related secure hardware /software for communication. This should be easily paid for out of the security budgets, because this entire scheme will secure the entire nation from several whole classes of intelligence threat. Then you set up a star topology network, with a clear legal framework for when the government is permitted to access traffic that goes over it, and a requirement that they publish that they have done so a maximum of one year after the fact. This kind of thing can be done with shared (largish) key block ciphers. (And was, prior to adoption of public key systems[1].) Even (three key) triple DES is still (barely) reasonably used. One-time pads will buy you improved deep time (vs moore's law, and quantum computers. Fat fingers, key generation attacks, and key compromise all remain possible, albeit improbable) security but it is not clear to me what else it gets you if the block cipher is good (and QC-resistant), key is big enough and maybe multiple encryption is used to be sure(r).

    Bye bye lesser forms of crypto, because, well, nobody is going to buy any when they already have a form which is proof against everything except a court order. International communications work how? (Or is there a world government in this scenario?)

    [1] V. Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep: "There was the time Blueshell had a humor fit at Pham's faith in public key encryption,"

    493:

    You engaged the brake by pulling out on the handle. It had some kind of a ratchet arrangement that kept it tight. To release the hand brake you had to turn the handle to unlock it.

    I had forgotten about those.

    Lest everyone think were totally bonkers with our pedals in the US, that worst case I described was from 50s pickup trucks. Foot starters were rare by the end of the 50s if they existed at all.

    But many bench seat situations (mostly commercial and pickup trucks) still use pedal operated parking brakes. Push to apply, push to release. Although I suspect most of those will become electric (like on my 2016 Civic) soon.

    494:

    Somewhat getting back to the original topic.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42217798

    "Venezuela unveils virtual currency amid economic crisis"

    Although details at this time are a bit fuzzy.

    495:

    You can sell the service to non-citizens. At least those in jurisdictions that do not declare the pads contraband - They have to be physically delivered with a solid chain of custody, after all.

    And it gets you security against innovations in math. Most crypto is an armsrace of clever, OTP is the refusal to play. .

    Wait, key gen? Uhm, you generate one time pads by measuring physical processes - geiger counters, ocean noise, the solar wind, ect, then xor. If someone comes up with an algorithm for cracking the output of that sort of thing, it would be formal proof of the simulation hypothesis (And also that the people coding our world were lazy bums)

    496:

    I had to use an emergency brake in that setup once. In the 1980s I drove for a shuttle company and one night I had seven other people in my van and was getting off the freeway onto a clover-leaf exit. I had just started turning into the curve and attempting to brake when the hydraulic brake system underwent complete failure.

    Fortunately, I had experimented with "pull out the brake release and push the emergency brake pedal" a couple times previously, and I executed it correctly and safely.

    But I was a little freaked afterwards.

    497:

    And it gets you security against innovations in math. Most crypto is an armsrace of clever, OTP is the refusal to play. This is much less true for block ciphers.. Multiple encryption to be sure.

    Uhm, you generate one time pads by measuring physical processes - geiger counters, ocean noise, the solar wind, ect, then xor. Probably not xor; better to tumble the bits through a hash function or similar. Elderly Cynic at 118 suggests a similar approach, and it sounds like he's given it some serious thought. Anyway, mainly goofing on you here a bit; obviously key selection attacks against such procedures are impossible. :-) And side-channel techniques like monitoring the power usage or rf emissions of the key generation equipment, or compromise of the equipment, are concerns that could be adequately addressed to the satisfaction of all concerned but the most paranoid. It might however be unwise to make bets against future technologies. Again, again outsourcing to Vernor Vinge, short story Original Sin (1972), The only gadget the humans use is something called 'mam'ri which appears to be something like a pile of cloth with some sparkly light in it. They fold it and finger it and things happen. No explanation is given, but it is clearly a very advanced technology. Another time, a human is trying to explain to an alien why he can't use his 'mam'ri: he'll be detected. How will he know if he's detected? Bad luck. The human 'police' can cause them to have runs of very bad luck without knowing exactly where they are.

    Or, if you prefer, an approach resembling Anthropic Computing (there's a paper on this too): But what could NP-hardness possibly have to do with the Anthropic Principle? Well, when I talked before about computational complexity, I forgot to tell you that there's at least one foolproof way to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. The method is this: first guess a solution at random, say by measuring electron spins. Then, if the solution is wrong, kill yourself! If you accept the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, then there's certainly some branch of the wavefunction where you guessed right, and that's the only branch where you're around to ask whether you guessed right! It's a wonder more people don't try this.

    One drawback of this algorithm is that, if the problem instance didn't have a solution, then you'd seem to be out of luck! But there's a simple way to fix this: with tiny probability, don't do anything. Then, if you find yourself in the branch where you didn't do anything, you can infer that there almost certainly wasn't any solution -- since if there was a solution, then you probably would've found yourself in one of the universes where you guessed one.

    498:

    Betting my life on an interpretation of quantum mechanics isn't a model of computation I'm interested in pursuing, no matter how much I might want to plan a sales trip to 50 cities.

    499:

    I certainly tried to :-) Whether XOR is adequate is interesting. If the components are already well-hashed and uniformly distributed in any number of bits, XOR is fine. If they aren't, it isn't. But it doesn't weaken the strongest component unless there are vulnerable associations between the components.

    The equivalent used for random numbers for simulation is adding up a lot of U(0,1) numbers are taking the residuum modulo one. The references that say this was invented by X (X varies) are crap - it's been known since time immemorial, though that's probably sometime in the 20th century.

    500:

    No, Kushner will NOT have been talking to the Saudis about a Palestinian state. The Saudis don't give a fuck about the Palestinians, and are currently joined at the hip to Israel, based on their common hostility to Iran. That arrangement reminds me strongly of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

    501:

    "Left foot on the clutch, right foot on the accelerator, left hand on the steering wheel, right hand on the parking brake lever."

    Not just for tight parking spaces - that sounds like normal driving to me, at least anyplace with hills and especially hills you have to stop on. I've heard of the heel-toe thing that apparently is popular in some parts of the world. I was always taught that it is a poor technique to so much as touch the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time. It sounds like a technique to reserve for when your handbrake doesn't work.

    I learned to drive in by grandfather's HQ Kingswood. (Americans would think of this as a Chevy... there's probably a similar Vauxhall too). This had an 3.3 litre straight 6, a front bench seat, manual 3-speed column shift, a headlight dimmer footswitch on the floor to the left of the clutch and a handbrake lever on the side of the bench between the driver and the door. This was like a normal handbrake, with the release button on the end of the lever except that when it was engaged the lever would fall back down to the floor. To disengage, you'd pull it back up till you could feel the tension, then press the release button.

    I don't remember the column shift being that big of a deal. I might misremember, it's been over 30 years, but I think it was down for first, up for second, pull back and down for third and pull back and up for reverse. Not rocket science, and as easy to get into muscle memory as any other configuration. Minor risk of bumping it out of gear while reaching for something on the floor.

    The only thing wrong with that car (well apart from lack of air-conditioning which is pretty much unthinkable in Queensland these days) was that the rear springs were always cactus. But that was because my grandfather always transported 3 hundredweight bags of pollard in the boot every second day.

    502:

    You piqued my curiosity, so I thought I'd measure the power consumed by this laptop during web browsing (using a crap consumer-grade meter, so only reporting figures to 5W accuracy, as I don't trust the meter to actually meet its claimed accurate to 1W spec).

    Normally, it draws about 20W from the wall, with a Facebook tab and a WhatsApp Web tab open, plus (e.g.) the BBC News homepage or equivalent, and spikes at as high as 90W from the wall during page load, before settling back down to 20W once I'm just reading the news. That's the baseline to compare to; I'm drawing 20W continuous, plus a further 70W at under 10% duty cycle. If I turn the screen off, but prevent the laptop going to sleep, it drops to about 10W; setting the laptop to sleep drops it below my meter's ability to measure (and hibernate is obviously zero power).

    I then closed all tabs, and opened a site that's been reported to use background mining in the browser; my power draw stayed at 90W for several seconds, and dropped down to about 85W where it stayed put while I read the page. I then locked the computer (which turns the screen off, but does not let it sleep), and waited. Power consumption did not fall within the first 5 minutes of screen off time; it normally dives after about 2 seconds (which is quick enough that it could well fall faster, but the meter is being its usual crappy self).

    So, you're looking at four times the power consumption of my laptop in normal use, or 8 times if I open a page, then lock my screen before I close the tab. That's not a small increase; while I haven't measured recently, my home desktop machine (a Haswell-era system) shows similar shifts in power consumption between idle and full load, as does my older Xeon system (an Ivybridge-era Xeon). I took similar measurements back in 2007 on a brand new desktop machine - again, the difference between idle power and full load power was high, unlike the 3 year old machine it was replacing.

    Basically, either you're assuming that most people are running desktop computers more than 10 years old, or you're encouraging a significant increase in power draw when you use someone's browser to mine blockchains in the background.

    503:

    Bitcoin The "FT" ( usual warnings about paywalls which you may or may not be able to circumvent ) .. has had several articles on BTC recently - I read the one at the weekend in hardcopy. They really, really don't like it - but they don't seem to (yet) have spotted the power-draw problem.

    504:

    One-time pads are a powerful tool, but the problem with them comes from the fact that like any other deciphering technology, the pad can be intercepted during transit or copied at the source. Unless the source and destination are highly secure and the transit is bulletproof -- which won't be the case for the vast majority of sources, such as corporations and private individuals -- the risk of interception/copying remains high.

    Similarly, though large keys seem like a great solution, they're less effective when there are repeating features in a series of documents. For example, if you know that the first 1K of text in every e-mail message from an organization is the standard message header from Outlook (from, to, date and time, subject) and the last part is a long signature (e.g., I've seen standard corporate confidentiality statements that run a couple hundred words long), that would seem to give you a powerful jump on deciphering the rest of the message. That approach was part of how Turing cracked the Nazi encryption.

    One thing I've never understood about public-key cryptography: If you can send someone a message using their public key, and can intercept or obtain a copy of the resulting encrypted message, can't you then reverse-engineer the private key by mapping the input to the output? Not a trivial exercise, but seems within the realm of plausibility. You'd only have to succeed once for this to compromise that person's security until they spotted the problem and chose a new key.

    505:

    Public-key cryptography: that attack you describe is possible, of course, but if it was easy, the whole public-key cryptography would be broken.

    The reason for this is that you can intercept the resulting encrypted message very easily. The public key means just that: it's public, and a key. It is used by the sender to encrypt the message, so to do what you described, the attacker needs only to get the public key (which is, well, public) and encrypt any and all messages they want. There is no need to send the encrypted messages to the owner of the public key.

    The security in this is that the only key that can be used to decrypt the messages is the private key. This should of course be kept secret and private.

    So, yeah, it is very difficult to get the private key from the public key - otherwise the public-key cryptography wouldn't work.

    506:

    Yes, and traffic analysis. They close one class of attacks, provably, but do nothing about the others. No Such Agency etc. don't like people using them because they can't decrypt them, but I don't believe that's a major reason. Arguably, the main reason that they aren't favoured in the West is that the Russians like them :-) The other, practical, reason is that you need a key as long as your message, though there are ways to 'expand' such pads to produce a probably unbreakable cipher that is many times the size of the key.

    The repeating message issue is trivial to resolve: just start every message with an unpredictable value (and there are plenty of ways to get those). To protect against some other classes of attack, just start every block with one (not the same, of course). Simples.

    And, yes, you can do that to public-key encryption. It is PRECISELY why the spooks are interested in quantum computing, because (as far as I have been able to decode the mathematical polemic) it is the only known realistically practical application for that technology.

    507:

    What Mikko said - the reason why crypto and cyber security types were running around with their hair on fire a few weeks ago (and Estonia ended up cancelling over 700k of their ID cards) was precisely that there was a vulnerability discovered in the way that keys were being generated for certain brands of smart cards that made their private keys factorisable from their public keys with trivial amounts of compute time.

    Regards Luke

    508:

    .. Honestly, I suspect one major reason one time pads are not more popular is that once you have decided to go with that, the entire rest of the job becomes a lengthy exercise in execution. Making sure noone stuck a bug inside your keyboard, that the courier delivering the pad documents possession for the entire delivery, ect, ect. You cant get rich or famous coming up with a better algorithm in this field, just.. "Did we check all the boxes? Yes?"

    509:

    My Father required me to demonstrate an ability start on a hill without either spinning the tires or killing the engine, without using the handbrake, before I was allowed to take my driver's test. That skill wasn't in the official test, but it was useful when I drove a manual shift car.

    510:

    Mikko Parviainen responded to my question about public keys: "The public key means just that: it's public, and a key. It is used by the sender to encrypt the message, so to do what you described, the attacker needs only to get the public key (which is, well, public) and encrypt any and all messages they want... The security in this is that the only key that can be used to decrypt the messages is the private key."

    I recall reading that the approach was asymmetrical, but it wasn't clear to me how that worked in practice. So far as I understand things, the problem lies in the difficulty of factoring large numbers or other computationally difficult problems. If you'll pardon my crude math notation, my understanding is that in the factoring approach, the overall key is XY, where X is public and Y is private. When you encrypt message A using key X, the actual encryption adds Y (which is inaccessible to the person who uses your public key) so that A is actually encrypted using XY, not just using X. So to break the code when you know A and X, all you need to do isintercept AXY. Because you know A and X, shouldn't it be possible to determine the private key as AXY/AX = Y? That's the part I'm not understanding.

    Elderly Cynic noted: "The repeating message issue is trivial to resolve: just start every message with an unpredictable value (and there are plenty of ways to get those)."

    The flaw in this approach is the same as the flaw in the Enigma approach: it relies on the operator to remember to change the key, which apparently Enigma operators often forgot (or were too lazy) to do. The result was multiple messages encrypted using the same pad, thereby facilitating decryption. Humans are always the weak link in security chains. The approach could definitely be automated (built into the software), but it hasn't been done yet on any significant scale -- so any organization or user who (for example) uses Microsoft Outlook will have to make an effort to implement the available encryption solutions and find a way to force users to use them.

    511:

    The public key used to encrypt a message sent to someone is a very large number which is the product of two large prime numbers (XY). Decoding the message needs both the prime numbers X and Y. Factoring a really large number into its primes takes a long time (assuming some esoteric conditions for choosing the initial prime numbers are met) so an attacker trying to determine the two primes used to create the public key has a lot of work to do if it's big enough. 1024 bits is considered a "good start" these days, 2048 bits is also used a lot in SSL and the like. Cracking a 768-bit key took a couple of years on several hundred computers.

    512:

    Wubba, wubba, wubba! WHAT decade are you referring to? The OPERATOR is required to remember to change the key?

    Such things have been programmed (using fully functional computers) for the past 60 years, and haven't been done any OTHER way for at least 30! It's a TRIVIAL task to program that in!

    513:

    The actual RSA algorithm (one of the simplest public key algorithms) is more complex than that.

    To summarize; you don't use the two large primes directly. Instead, they set the modulus that you're using for your arithmetic. The modulus is one half of both keys; the public key also has a sensibly sized prime (chosen to suit you, as long as it fits certain conditions), such as 65537, while the private key uses the multiplicative inverse of the public key's prime modulo the modulus.

    The core math behind RSA is that, given a prime E, and a modulus N = PQ, you can trivially calculate values of D for ED mod PQ = 1, but not for ED mod N = 1 (short of brute-forcing either PQ or E, which implies that N is large enough to not be trivially brute forced). This Doctrina post has more, and links to a further explanation; it also has some hand-worked examples of doing the RSA algorithms with human-sized numbers.

    514:

    Nice research. Now would like to see a comparison between the mining site and any site supported by heavy ad slinging - you know the ones that ‘beachball’ safari or chrome :)

    515:

    Thanks, all, for the additional explanation of public-key encryption. I'll need to find time to read the article Simon suggested and work the examples to fully "get" the explanation. Right now, still a bit nebulous.

    Elderly Cynic noted: "Wubba, wubba, wubba! WHAT decade are you referring to? The OPERATOR is required to remember to change the key? Such things have been programmed (using fully functional computers) for the past 60 years, and haven't been done any OTHER way for at least 30!"

    Sorry for not being clearer. I used the example of Enigma to explain why adding encryption to something like Outlook is trickier than it sounds. I'm sure the spooks have automated tools for encryption. But for consumer and corporate applications, software exists for encryption (e.g., PGP), but most organizations don't implement it because making it non-optional requires all of their employees' contacts to implement a compatible encryption system. Haven't been a wage slave for going on 15 years, but none of the many wage slaves I exchange e-mail with (0%) have requested that I adopt encryption for our future exchanges. A small but not trivial sample size across several sectors. The problem is that once the encryption becomes optional, people forget to use it... usually at the most inconvenient or damaging times.

    516:
    “Left foot on the clutch, right foot on the accelerator, left hand on the steering wheel, right hand on the parking brake lever.”

    Not just for tight parking spaces - that sounds like normal driving to me, at least anyplace with hills and especially hills you have to stop on. I've heard of the heel-toe thing that apparently is popular in some parts of the world. I was always taught that it is a poor technique to so much as touch the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time. It sounds like a technique to reserve for when your handbrake doesn't work.

    Back when I took my initial driver's license test, if you drove a manual transmission vehicle for the road test, you were not allowed to use the handbrake for getting started from a stop at an up-hill location. You had to be able to coordinate throttle, brake & clutch to pull off without significant roll-back. If you had to use the handbrake you failed the test.

    The simple remedy for that was to beg, borrow or steal (Ok, maybe not steal) a car with an automatic transmission in which to take the road test. Several of my friends "borrowed" my mom's car (that had an automatic transmission) to take their drivers license road test.

    517:

    As long as we're talking about OTPs, hashes and such, could someone familiar with this stuff(*) comment on why allegedly cryptographically secure tools like SHA-256 and AES-256 couldn't be used to produce good-enough OTPs?

    For example:

    • Take two pictures, P1.jpg and P2.jpg, of two different scenes.

    • Apply SHA-256 to P1 and use the resulting hash as a key for AES-256 to encrypt P2.

    • Check with a hex editor to be sure the resultant encrypted file doesn't have any undesirable headers or footers. Remove any such.

    Is the resultant file sufficiently random and inscrutable to be used as an OTP?

    (*) I am extremely unfamiliar with this stuff and advocate nothing here, just asking.

    518:

    And something completely different ...

    However unlikely it might be; with all the headaches May is having negotiating Brexit, IF the problems appear to be insoluble, could May call for another referendum to reconsider Brexit?

    Not saying she would or should, but could she?

    519:

    Not saying she would or should, but could she?

    In theory, yes. In practice? Nope.

    Theory: the PM can throw together an act of parliament providing for another referendum, parliament rubber-stamps it, and it goes forward.

    Practice: firstly, it takes most of a year for the machinery to creak into life (special act of parliament, among other things). Secondly, the pro-Brexit back benchers in her own party will stab her in the back at any sign of backsliding. There are leadership challengers waiting in the wings and the 1922 Committee is quite capable of replacing a PM on the fly when they lose the confidence of their own party. Thirdly, she can't get such an act through without the DUP, or the LibDems, or the SNP, or Labour also backing it — she's a minority leader. Indeed, she'd need a three line whip on her own party and DUP support or LibDem support and no backsliding to make it a sure thing. Why would Labour vote with the government, if it gave her an easy way to back away from the cliff edge? What they'd want would be a snap election and then it's Prime Minister Corbyn's bomb to defuse.

    It is an unholy clusterfuck.

    520:

    Naughty biographers and historians then, although one has to ask who was doing the airbrushing. Heinlein or them or others? Anyway, I take it that Elderly Cynics interruption into the Heinlein discussion has been demonstrated to be irrelevant?

    Then onto Brexit. I know the british ruling class is rubbish, but it is worrying just how stupid they are. Why do we have such incompetent rulers?

    521:

    They aren't necessarily incompetent, it's just that the set of people they have to appease in order to keep their jobs is not the same as the set of people they officially represent.

    522:

    For me, if it's a choice between anything and a tree rat, that tree rat is history. (Yes, I have a Thing against them.)

    523:

    We have tree rats and squirrels in the UK. I will generally avoid squashing squirrels.

    I am told this double standard makes me an anti-immigrant fascist.

    524:

    I, personally, hate the antilock brakes. First time it hit me was in Chicago, maybe 10 years ago, in winter, and I started to pump, and it did, really hard... and I will say, with 100% confidence, that I skidded further than if I had been in sole control.

    And yes, pump. Fastest ankle in the east, here, and it works. The antilock pump too fast, I think, and maybe too hard (or is it too soft?), but I know I do better.

    525:

    "Libertarians", in the US, are almost completely "I got mine, too bad about you", and "If I work harder - my 60 or 70 hour weeks aren't hard enough - I'll be rich any day now."

    They all claim to be afraid of Big Government, and argue against the government having a monopoly on violence (?!)... but none seem to be afraid of big corporations, try to argue around the existence of the old "company towns", don't seem to understand who it is that enforces contracts (D. Trump, anyone?), and think they could "chose" a mediator, in a standoff against any moderate or larger business.

    In other words, suckers for would-be oligarchs.

    526:

    Heinlein was complex. I know very little about his early life, but by the late fifties, had his own version of the John Birch Society (extreme right wing ANTI-COMMIE under your bed!).

    His writing - I've always said that Ayn Rand was a terrible writer, and if I wanted a similar philosophy with decent writing and a story, I'd read Heinlein.

    My take on everything he wrote between Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Friday is that I blame it on the blod clots, and the other illnesses. I may have started to read one or two, but gave them up as a bad show. Friday, as someone put it, was three pretty good novels that didn't work as one, and the character changes drastically between them. Job was great, and hysterical.

    527:

    ROTFLMAO!

    I mean, you do know the story of the "feud" between Isaac and Harlan, do you not?

    For those that don't, it started when a young Harlan (late teens? early 20's?) walked up to Isaac at a con. Looked at him, and said, "You're Isaac Asimov?" Isaac "modestly" agreed... and Harlan went on, "Well, you're not so much."

    The amusing feud went on the rest of Isaac's life. I remember Torcon in '73, where, during the Masquerade halftime, the MC announced Isaac would do a walk on, with his imitation of Harlan: He proceeded across the stage on his knees. Harlan (who was toastmaster of the con), stood up in the audience and yelled out, "At least I'm not five feet around!", leaving us all in stitches.

    528:

    I'll have to agree... and I drive a long minivan. Is the motorcylist suggesting I can't take that 95% turn at 20mph or so?

    And then there was my dearly beloved, departed, 1986 Toyota Tercel wagon, which my late wife and I drove like a sports car....

    529:

    Re: column mounted manual shifts:

    Nice history with pictures here: https://driventowrite.com/2014/12/16/theme-dashboards-the-column-shift/

    As to floor mounted emergency/parking brakes: Our 2011 Ford Escape has one, so they are still around I think.

    530:

    "Objective" principles of law? What would those be, and how would you identify them?

    Thou shall not get a divorce? Abortion is murder? Sex out of marriage is ->wrong<-? All those were viewed for a very long time as "objectively obvious".

    How about "I want you to pull the plug on me"?

    531:

    So musing about how this whole BitCoin thing would work in the Laundry Universe (which hopefully isn't reachable from the Empire Games Universe :) ).

    Computation attracts creatures from the multi-verse. Why wouldn't governments, knowing this, have executed any BTC-like mining with extreme prejudice? One possibility is that all that hashing generates a bunch of "noise" so that Case Nightmare Green is reduced. Just a thought.

    532:

    how this whole BitCoin thing would work in the Laundry Universe

    Mentioned in passing in "The Labyrinth Index" (but because it isn't a Bob novel, it's only in passing: Mhari isn't a tech-head).

    533:

    There's pretty good evidence that bitcoin eats peoples brains in this universe, so the laundry version is going to be horrific.

    534:

    So bytecoin then?

    535:

    For me, if it's a choice between anything and a tree rat, that tree rat is history. (Yes, I have a Thing against them.)

    It's not always a tree rat. I once saw a bull Elk take out a Volvo station wagon on US-24 near Manitou Springs, CO.

    The Volvo's driver never had time to brake or swerve. His car was totaled, he survived somewhat shaken and because I was paying attention AND always try to maintain a safe following distance, I was already braking before the Elk actually made it onto the roadway and therefore stopped instead of rear-ending the Volvo.

    536:

    It only takes a nybble.

    537:

    Heinlein was complex. ... My take on everything he wrote between Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Friday is that I blame it on the blood clots, and the other illnesses.

    Starting with "The Number of the Beast", it seems like he was really preoccupied with weird sex. I got the feeling his writing was strongly influenced by problems he was having with his plumbing.

    538:

    He was lucky - Volvos and Saabs are specifically designed around moose strikes. They have specially reinforced front pillars to stop the animal entering the passenger box.

    539:

    He was lucky - Volvos and Saabs are specifically designed around moose strikes. I was forced (by the instant fact-check compulsion that was not satisfiable 20 years ago) to do a search on that (true!) and found this as well: VOLVO'S CARS NOW SPOT MOOSE AND HIT THE BRAKES FOR YOU

    The automaker's new Large Animal Detection system can spot and identify outsized carbon-based hazards and stop the car before colliding with moose in the Arctic Circle, kangaroo Down Under, or deer in Suburbia, USA. The tech, which debuted in the recent S90 sedan and XC90 SUV, will now be deployed in the forthcoming off-road-friendly V90 Cross Country wagon, a car equipped with a slew of other adventure-enabling, anti-death innovations like beefier suspension, bigger wheels, hill descent control and seat belt pre-tensioners that will cinch you to your seat with unholy grip if the car senses a loss of control.

    540:

    Large Animal Detection

    Are you calling me fat?

    541:

    I've come around to the understanding, one I should qualify by saying I make no claim it covers the whole truth, inasmuch as such a thing is available, that the "what it says on the box" claim for every kind of political position is in every way a complete lie. Ideologies are nearly all retrospective rationalisations and cover basically tribal differences.

    The differentiator the works for me is how someone answers the question "Who are the good people, whom we should look after and treat as our own?"

    Traditional conservatives and even libertarians are basically socialists if you limit "the good people" to your own family. But by and large, the more liberal you are than he more expansive you are about who are "the good people" and the more conservative you are the more restrictive. There seems to be a correlation with tolerance for difference and an inverse correlation with openness to experience and more knowledge. Hence things like "Mac versus PC" turning up mostly among recipients of technology rather than creators of it. It make sure the perspective of racism ideologies pretty clear cut too. Racist small government types are closer to Nazis than anything else even if you take the "socialist" part of the Nazi name seriously (and you could even argue it's meaningful in this sense).

    On the other hand I find the usually undefined concept of "government" in libertarian constructs doesn't correspond to anything I would generally accept exists in reality. Maybe it's an artefact of the way things are arranged in the US.

    542:

    Somewhere there is a photo of a Volvo 164 after an earthquake in San Francisco which had brought down an elevated freeway on top of it. Those front pillars have bent a little under the weight but they have not collapsed, the cabin height is not reduced by more than an inch or two, and anyone sitting inside it at the time would have been just fine.

    Unfortunately having found it once I have no idea where it was and can't find it again, and the Volvo museum don't seem to know either.

    There is also the advertising photo of 11 of them stacked on top of each other vertically, but the one I'm thinking of is more impressive because it isn't a contrived situation.

    543:

    .. A high quality one time pad for practical use is a sequence of ones and zeroes where each consecutive number has a roughly fifty-fifty chance of being either with no way to predict any entry in the list even given the sum total of the rest of the sequence - every place in the sequence is wholly independent. Photos of most scenery have large stretches of repeats when encoded as number sequences, so no, not good enough. Generating large pads quickly that meet this requirement is a fairly interesting engineering problem, since having a machine flip coins is both much too slow, and also not random enough.

    The easiest-to-explain approach is the clocked Geiger counter. Geiger counters measure individual nuclear events (Well, the electric event those cause) This is used to measure how intensely radioactive something is - intensity being defined as "How many nuclear events do we measure per second". However, each event is independent - the approximate total number in a day is deterministic, but whether one happens at any given moment is unknowable. So if you have a rock with a measured radioactivity of about 120 events/minute, then you can hook a counter up to a clock and a flushing buffer, and every one fourth of a second, check if there has been an event in the past one-fourth of a second, then add either a one or a zero to the pad, depending.

    In practice, of course, you set up the machinery to use the shortest time interval you possibly can and adjust the distance to the radioactive source you are using until the pad comes out about half ones, half zeros. And of course, make very, very sure the whole thing is working correctly. Many other forms of randomness can be used, the important bit is that they need to be non-computable.

    544:

    I do know about the "feud" and read about in the introduction of a book the two men had written together. But it's worth noting that getting into a serious feud with Ellison was probably the only thing you could do that was dumber than getting into a serious feud with Asimov. (Look at the number Ellison did on Roddenberry about "City on the Edge of Forever." The book came out a couple years after Roddenberry's death and eviscerated the poor man.)

    I think it was DC Fontana who said that evidence of Ellison's wrath could be found in the "places on the Paramount lot where nothing would ever grow again." I also remember watching Bill Maher the night Ellison called Newt Gingrich a "rotten bag of pustulent monkey testicles." If Asimov and Ellison had really gone at it we'd all be radioactive!

    545:

    It wouldn't matter how strong the A pillars are here in Oz. Sometimes the roos don't touch really anything other than the windscreen.

    This from last week.

    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/kangaroo-goes-through-car-windscreen-and-dies-on-the-back-seat-20171130-gzvwag.html

    546:

    The "carbon-based hazards" restriction is why Teslas were chosen as the first cars in space. You need to drive safely around silicon and dark matter based life forms after all.

    547:

    ...she can't get such an act through without the DUP, or the LibDems, or the SNP, or Labour also backing it ... Except, perhaps, possibly, maybe ... There are a large number of Tories an even larger number of Labour members ( Apart from traitor (*) wanker Corbyn, of course ) & all the Lem-o-Crats who are desperate to stop the whole thing & withdraw At_50. So, it could happen.

    My nightmare is that we crash out with no deal, the economy collapses, Greek-style, C gets elected, the armed services are shut down & THEN Putin makes his move in the Baltics ....

    (*) Yes, traitor Corbyn: His statement that NO war since 1945, in which Britain was involved was justified: Includes Korea - UN mandate. Falklands - defence against fascist aggression. Come to that, the Malaysian "emergency" when we were trying to withdraw from that part of the world & hand over to the locals as self-governing, & other people made a land-grab. See also Belize.

    548:

    Wrong, wrong & horribly correct. 1: "The British ruling class" are suprisingly good at it - or no worse than the ruling class in any other country, at any rate. 2: Nor stupid, usually, either, though they (like other people) often have to re-order their priorities, whilst not being allowed to change their minds when circumstances change, because of politics .... Example: the growing realisation through the 1930's that Adolf was a bigger threat then the communist religion. And we still got there faster than the US - look up the phrase that the Dump uses: "Amerika Ersten", oops, America First! 3: SPOT ON There are NO political leaders, in any party, visible anywhere with any competence whatsoever, with the possible exception of Ruth Davidson.

    549:

    Unspeakably cute tom-kitten ( "Ratatosk" ) has a thing for the grey "squirrels" round here - so far he's had nine that I know of.

    550:

    My first experience of a column manual was when I bought borrowed an old Bedford van and it reinforced all my prejudices. The linkage was loose and clunky and, although I rather got to enjoy driving the thing around with the sliding door held back and the hefty movement to effect each gearchange (mercifully just 3 ratios) it was, objectively speaking, awful. It was arm wrestling. Yeah, YUCK. I got lumbered with it, at Uni, because I was, again, the only available person woth a driving license ... though that was also how I got the fun experience of driving a grey fergie, which was wonderful fun

    551:

    Did he get the name "Ratatosk" before or after his enthusiasm for tree rats became known? Only the important questions! :)

    552:

    I think it was a case of ( brain-fart ) ... what is it when the expectation produces the thing? Thats was popular in SF & some crap mysticism about 20 year back? Pterry did a job on it, of course.

    Our feline cohabitees are/were usually named after mythical/fictional characters: Fledermaus, Basht, Sarastro, Ratatosk, Lara ( "Zhivago" ), Hermann ( Hesse - but later Göring - though there was also Hexadecimal & Stripeymonster )

    553:

    Nominative Determinism. HTH, HAND, etc...

    Black squirrels have reached my garden. Apparently the local dogs find them far more fun to chase that greys.

    554:

    That's it - thanks

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    Back on the original subject...

    Parliamentary Question on cryptocurrency regulation And Heavy 110-page academic study on "Benchmarking" crypto-c's No obvious conclusions, though.

    555:

    Btw, David L - are you the author of Arabella of Mars?

    Do you need to get in touch with that David? We don't hang out regularly or anything, but he and I have friends and acquaintances in common.

    (Granted it would be cool to have unknowingly run into him here on a blog hosted half a planet away.)

    556:

    Just tried the same setup on an ads-heavy page that obliterates Chrome. It spends longer drawing 90W from the wall, settling after about 30 seconds instead of within 5 seconds of page load; it also settles to about 30W instead of the normal 20W. Finally, it does not draw significantly more power than normal when I turn the screen off; it drops down to 20W.

    I suspect Firefox has some intelligence about not drawing things I can't see - the long period of high power draw is the ads loading and getting into place (and boy are there crazy numbers of ads on the page I chose; 5 lines of content, and print preview tells me I'd need 30 sheets of A4 to print it plus all ads). This would match the power reduction when I turn the screen off electronically - it knows I can't see it, so it doesn't show it.

    Thus, I conclude that even in that case, you're drawing about 3x the power I would draw on an ad-heavy page. In other words, if everyone does this, global power consumption on compute goes up dramatically.

    557:

    You're talking about whitening transforms. These are techniques to "shuffle" the entropy in a key around so that you end up with white noise with the "same" entropy as the input vector. These (and other constructs, such as von Neumann's debiaser) are used to extract randomness from a partly predictable input stream (such as a resistor's thermal noise).

    558:

    Actually, it is trivial to add to things like Emailers, but I agree that making it optional means that it won't be used when it matters. There are two good reasons to avoid it:

    The first is that it stops one class of attack (and not the most important, either), but does nothing to stop others - indeed, it alerts your opponents that this may be a channel of interest.

    The second is the reason that many people with clue are adamantly against the cryptographic signing of Emails using 'trusted third party' mechanisms. It allows anyone with access to the third party to create a false Email, which they can then 'prove' was being sent by you. This problem is one that BitCoin was set up to alleviate.

    559:

    Yes. Spotting the fundamental flaw in von Neumann's debiasser is left as an exercise for the reader. While such approaches definitely help, they don't actually stop direct attacks on the encryption - indeed, for small-block approaches (32 bits), they don't help against an attacker with a modern system. You need some proper source of unpredictability - it's a very bad idea to refer to it as randomness, because that way leads to sloppy thinking and logic errors.

    560:

    Because something is legal doesn't make it justified. While I don't agree with him, I could make a strong case that it is not HIM who is the traitor, but the people who have sold the UK out to foreign powers. Not least Thatcher.

    561:

    I am in partial agreement - certainly as reagrds the madwoman from Grantham.

    So - are you suugesting that, as Corbyn apparently wanted to, we should have let the Argentine Fascist Junta take over the Falklands, or Sukarno's thugs take what became Malaysia away from its inhabitants?

    562:

    A good question. The question is whether the actions were likely to do more harm than good, both for the populations concerned and more generally, over what timescales, and that's not clear. Dictatorships and other tyrannies pass, eventually.

    In the case of the Falklands, the harm that I foresaw at the time was that it would hand the UK to neolibertarian extremists, foreign (mainly USA) control and future military adventurism - as in fact happened - which is why I felt that the best thing for Britain as a whole would be to lose the war. But, no, I didn't approve of Galtieri's thugs any more than you did, and that would be tough on the inhabitants for at least a decade or two. Damned if you win; damned if you lose.

    What she REALLY ought to have done was not to drop us in that hole - as a lot of us said in time to have had a good chance of avoiding it - but she wasn't interested in negative thinkers. It wasn't entirely her fault, of course - the FCO mandarins should have shared much of the blame.

    563:

    are you suugesting that, as Corbyn apparently wanted to, we should have let the Argentine Fascist Junta take over the Falklands

    The Junta moved in when Carrington told them, "that deal we negotiated? Turns out the islanders don't want us to sell them to you. Sorry, we can't run that past our electorate." Because Thatcher and Carrington intended to offload the Falklands on Argentina, and it took a cabinet minister being pelted off the island with ripe fruit in 1981 to convince them it wouldn't fly.

    So that was ... an entirely unnecessary war, in which upwards of a thousand soldiers, sailors and airmen died, caused by the Thatcher government fucking up Foreign Relations 101.

    (Seriously, if Argentina had been run by an elected nationalist/Peronist government at the time, the war would still have happened, for the same reason. You do not make offers you can't deliver on, then double-cross the other party. The end.)

    Sukarno ... the blame for that pissing match ultimately lies with the British and Dutch empires for stealing Indonesia and Malaysia in the first place. We should be paying reparations.

    564:

    To be fair, I don't think that Carrington actually KNEW that things had progressed as far as they had - my understanding from what came out was that the FCO had been negotiating that without keeping the minister fully informed (or, at least, hiding it in a mountain of bumf). Carrington was a honourable man (sigh! nostalgia!), but was definitely an upper-class twit.

    Your aside immediately made me think of the current Irish Question, w.r.t. the Belfast Agreement and the DUP deal - I suspect that you were also thinking of that ;-)

    565:

    Sukarno ... the blame for that pissing match ultimately lies with the British and Dutch empires for stealing Indonesia and Malaysia in the first place. We should be paying reparations. Maybe, maybe not, but IRRELEVANT. The Brits were doing the honourable thing by trying to withdraw, & hand the countries back to their inhabitants with majority rule. Local dictator ( with IIRC soviet backing? ) makes power-grab - not on. Ditto Belize ( though no soviet backing there )

    As for the madwoman's approach to dropping us in a hole (EC's quote), yes, well - also, making defence cuts in the face of foreign threats, as the junta was making was also extremely arrogant & stupid, wasn't it?

    As regards Ireland at present, the only ones with their heads screwed on are Varadkar & R Davidson, as far as I can see.

    566:

    Re: IRS VC FAQs

    Haven't read any of the posts following your (375), accordingly: apologies if someone else already mentioned this.

    The item below is interesting considering that much of VC is supposedly being used to hide transactions from folks like the IRS:

    'Therefore, payors making reportable payments using virtual currency must solicit a taxpayer identification number (TIN) from the payee. The payor must backup withhold from the payment if a TIN is not obtained prior to payment or if the payor receives notification from the IRS that backup withholding is required. See Publication 1281, Backup Withholding for Missing and Incorrect Name/TINs, for more information.'

    567:

    You completely misread me. If it's a tree rat, yup. Something the size of a moose, or more common in the US, deer (which my late wife, a native Texan, referred to as range rodents), is seriously dangerous. I've read a number of stories about someone getting killed because the stupid git came through the windshield. I know more than one person who's car needed major work after hitting one.

    But there has to be a third target, between large animal and oncoming vehicle: in the US, that would be on the right.

    568:

    I find your response extremely objectionable.

    It appears clear to me that your personal ideology overrides any normal definition of "socialism". By "normal", I mean social - as in, the entire national society, not some small family unit - control of the economy, to improve life for the 99%.

    When you claim that any "small group" can view themselves as "the good people", you might as well be asserting that medieval nobilty were socialists, and that nobles were the "good people".

    I refuse to accept your bizarre definition of "socialism" as calling red white. If you intend to actually communicate intelligently with other people who are not of your small, personal, "good people" group, then you can't use definitions you've made up.

    569:

    Re: Rand, Heinlein

    Read both authors in my teens and early 20s mostly on vacation - not too challenging, passed the time, and didn't worry about losing the story thread as I tossed back one or two liquid libations.

    Anyways - both had a mesmerizing way of telling stories. Rand's rants were like following a water eddy down some unending drain - lots of movement but at the end of it all, nothing that you could hold onto. Heinlein's key difference vs. Rand was that his protagonists were somewhat more likeable and refrained from doing deliberate harm to anyone not directly threatening them. Both were similar in not giving a damn about anyone else. Also, of the two, think that Heinlein actually did try to take a solid look at his society and extrapolate from there.

    570:

    I've always liked the story about Harlan in an actual Hollywood boardroom, just like the movies, and the head honcho is telling him that their screen writers will work it up... and Harlan gets up onto the table, walks down the table, and lifts the honcho up by his lapels, and starts telling him where to get off....

    Isaac, on the other hand, I once saw actually backpedal. In our huge party (we had the living room of a suite) at Torcon, he and the infamous (in the US at least - she was the one who did the exotic dance in the Masquerade halftime in KC in '76) Patia von Sternberg.

    "Give me the key to your room?" "Certainly, dahling, if you can remember what to do after we get there."

    It went on a bit.....

    571:

    Nope, don't need to, I was just wondering. I would like to know if he's the same David Levine who used to be in TAPS (long-running letterapa) that I was in for, oh, 15 years I think, until it fell apart due to the actions of one of the longest members of the 'zine (no, you don't attack your friends, and yes, other folks saw him as developing Issues, as they say).

    572:

    WAit, what? Thatcher et al intended to get rid of the Falkland islands? How isn't that common knowledge by now? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. What are the sources by the way? I would have thought embarassing stuff like that would have been buried longer than 30 years.

    573:

    At least a part of it is that the Falklands war was a "short victorious war" that was actually victorious war, against substantial odds, that helped expunge some of the humiliation of the Suez crisis and the retreat from Empire.

    It's still pointed to as an example of tosh like "punching above our weight" and "still a major military power".

    Admitting that it was a colossal fuck-up risks being seen as against the military (not as politically suicidal as in the US, but still something most politicians steer well clear of); and for those who want to point out that Thatcher was a flawed leader, there are plenty of other well known examples that don't require overturning a well-established mythos.

    574:

    I learned to drive on my mom's 1960's Oldsmobile Rocket 88 (floor it and you could watch the fuel guage drop as you passed Warp 1!) which was typical American outfit for the era - automatic transmission with a lever on the steering column, floor mounted parking brake and the usual floor mounted headlight dimmer switch.

    A little later my stepfather helped me pick out my own first car, a 1969 VW Beetle from the local police impound of confiscated cars. This one had been caught smuggling dope into Indiana from points south and had no heating duct work or insulation left after all the places where pot had been hidden was ripped out. It also had VW's 'semi-automatic' manual transmission: 4 speed with a shift lever in the usual place between the seats but no clutch pedal. Had a vacuum gadget that sensed movement of the gear lever and activated the clutch for you. Worked great so long as the vacuum wasn't leaking, which mine was. I had to wait at least four seconds between shifting. That's how I learned to shift without a clutch: to a 16 year old, four seconds is a long time.

    But the fun part was the headlight dimmer switch. I drove around for two weeks with the headlights on 'bright' until I found purely by accident that the turn signal lever on the left side of the steering column moved back and forth as well as up and down.

    Now I drive a 15 year old Saturn economy sedan with a 5-speed and 311,000 miles. Since Saturn has been out of business for 10 years or more I am somewhat apprehensive what it's going to cost when I finally do need a new clutch.

    575:

    A sign that is used in some parts of the world is "Elephants have right of way".

    576:

    Re: ' ... opened a site that's been reported to use background mining in the browser; my power draw stayed at 90W for several seconds, and dropped down to about 85W where it stayed put while I read the page.'

    Serious question: How can a non-techie identify (avoid) such sites?

    In the past couple of months have noticed a definite slow-down on my browser (Firefox) and attributed it to some preferred sites having added more AV ads to their pages.

    577:

    It came out after the episode, for those who were watching closely. Remember that the British government (and I don't mean those arseholes in Westminster, let alone Downing Street) is THE most skilled in the world at making evidence fade into the background until long after the culprits are beyond justice. As well as ensuring that any shit caused by the mandarinate's incompetence, negligence, corruption or even treason attaches solely to the politicians. Remember that "Yes, Minister" was the ACCEPTABLE face of the mandarinate.

    OGH may have seen something I didn't, but I don't remember it being actually Thatcher and Carrington, and (as I said above) I am not sure that they even realised that it had actually involved the Argentinians (rather than it being discussed entirely within the FCO mandarinate). THAT didn't come out until afterwards, because it was being done entirely by the FCO officials, under a policy approved by a previous government. But I didn't see any claims that the mandarins had actively kept it secret from the ministers.

    I have close second-hand experience of that happening in the DTI, in several respects, including some where their actions were close to treasonable. And I am virtually certain in THAT case that none of the ministers had actually been informed (except possibly in the most evasive "Yes, Minister" terms).

    578:

    How can a TECHIE do so? I have noticed such effects, recently, and assumed that it was abominations like Google Analytics (which I know causes such browser havoc). In the UK, running data mining is TECHNICALLY illegal under the Computer Misuse Act, but there is no way that our government would take action against such abuse. Even if the EU did, and we stayed in it, the UK government would drag its heels for as long as possible and do as little as possible.

    579:

    I hate Illinois Nazis.

    580:

    On the other hand it was not obscure that UK defence cuts had encouraged it. Or that a large factor in the UK being able to win was that the Argentinians turned out to be a rather nesh and incompetent enemy. And there was a lot of kerfuffle at the time about sinking the Belgrano being cheating (although they called it fancier words).

    In the end the fact that we won put every lesser aspect in the shade. I'm sure it would have been easy to present that particular aspect as "there could have been a deal, we said no to protect our people, they weren't having it, and they did a war instead", or something along those lines.

    581:

    It came out in the past decade — thirty years rule territory.

    582:

    As long as it isn't from the very first series you probably won't have a problem; just get the clutch for the Vauxhall or Opel that looks the same.

    I too was used to having the dipswitch on the floor and disapproved of it being moved to a stalk. But the stalk thing that really seems to catch people out is French headlights for people who aren't French. If you're in a French car and you can not figure out how to turn the headlights on, try twisting the stalks.

    583:

    Serious question: How can a non-techie identify (avoid) such sites?

    Use an ad-blocker and a javascript blocker. They'll intermittently nag you to load stuff, but at least you'll see what you're loading before it hogs your cpu.

    Alternatively, point your DNS server at 9.9.9.9 — the Quad9 DNS-level ad blocking service.

    And remember to manually block known bitcoin mining domains like coin-hive.com: more info here.

    584:

    the Argentinians turned out to be a rather nesh and incompetent enemy

    The Junta should have waited six months.

    Just six months later, the Nott Defense Review would have turned the Royal Navy into a convoy-escort-only force focussed on supporting NATO fighting WW3 in Europe, unable to independently mount a long range out-of-area expedition. And the Argentinian Air Force would have received more Exocets and probably be able to use them effectively. (They started the war with just four missiles on inventory, IIRC.) Also, invading in autumn would leave them having to dig in for a winter occupation ... but the RN would be trying to mount an invasion in winter, which would be even worse.

    585:

    Also, invading in autumn would leave them having to dig in for a winter occupation ... but the RN would be trying to mount an invasion in winter, which would be even worse.

    Ahem, southern hemisphere. The invasion and subsequent shooting war did take place in late autumn and winter.

    586:

    I must have put that quite badly, because you've completely missed what I was saying and are attributing to me things I didn't any wouldn't say. I'm not describing an ideology, not a prescriptive agenda but merely a descriptive attempt at better understanding what is in front of us. I'm certainly not offering an alternative definition of "socialism", and I could perhaps have done better using scare quotes to indicate that I was projecting self-described conservative usage in that context (though even that probably wouldn't have done).

    For me personally my best approximate value for "the good people" is "everyone". And to achieve outcomes I see For many this is more constrained, with even some progressives limiting it to national citizens or residents.

    When I say "conservatives are generally 'socialists' when it comes to their own families", I mean that they would give their own families opportunities, incentives, safety nets, minimum guaranteed incomes, health care and so on which they would deny to the rest of their society. This in the same sense that people talk about the military as internally "socialist". It's an attempt to contextualise statements like yours about "I got mine" - especially since their behaviour with their in-groups often contradicts this.

    If I'm showing a cavalier disregard for other people's beliefs, I'm disrespecting conservatives the most. If anything I'm giving socialists (in the normal sense, which for some reason you are taking incredibly seriously) the benefit of the default premise. I agree with you in regard to public policy. You possibly even missed my much more clumsy wording where I drew out the inference that in general, the more you know, the more openness to experience, the more tolerance for difference you have, the larger the "good people" group is likely to be. Is that at least clearer? You're welcome still to find it objectionable, of course.

    587:

    I have an evil-domains blocklist as long as your arm, but I still find that when I visit a new site I'm as likely as not to find about three more domains that need to go on it. Needless to say google analytics was one of the first entries, along with google this and google that and google the other.

    But an annoying trend recently has been for sites to host some or all of their evil shite on their own servers instead of linking to someone else's, so blocking domains doesn't work. On top of this is the really bloody annoying habit, whose prevalence seems to have exploded with HTML5, of either ignoring the existence of, or, worse, actively disabling, standard functionality (down to the level of "display some text") available in plain HTML or HTML+CSS and then writing a shitty javascript to re-implement it badly, so you have the choice at basic level of enabling javascript and having the site work badly, or disabling it and having it not work at all. And when this code is all mashed together with the evil code in the same file, it's a ginormous pain in the arse trying to selectively disable the right bits.

    Basically, I have come to observe - though certainly not to accept - that the expectation of being able to just click on a link and have the site display promptly, correctly, non-evilly, and without requiring the computing power of the NSA to be usably responsive, either on a standard browser or a browser plus nothing more than a standard adblocker, is not valid any more. I pretty much expect that for any new site that I'm ever going to want to do more than just look at a couple of pages on, I will probably have to spend several hours poking through its code swearing at whatever filthy programming idiom has been used for the javascript, separating the useful stuff from the huge pile of evil ajax calls, shittily-written grossly inefficient code, and things that are just plain stupid, then writing my own javascript to make the site work properly; and I find myself pleasantly surprised should this turn out not to be the case.

    At least you don't have to deal with sites written entirely in flash these days. Back when these were common, there were a few occasions when I visually-cloned an entire site in an evening, and sent the tarball to the site owner with a note saying "your site is shite because whoever you got to write it is an idiot, do it like this instead". The only reason I've ever been grateful for the existence of Apple is that they allowed me to add "nobody on an iphone can read your site" to strengthen the argument.

    588:

    As you say :-( I used to block javascript, but had to stop doing that because of the number of critical sites it disabled. I have just started again, and immediately discovered that I have to exempt www.antipope.org to post this :-) At least noscript allows that, unlike the on/off option I used to use. I don't use site blacklists, for the reason you say, but may have to start :-(

    I have seen sites which had a question, where the 'yes' and 'no' buttons were in flash. The perpetrators of such things should be emasculated and defenestrated.

    589:

    According to ebay, under 300 dollars for a clutch kit.

    590:

    MS Defender AV catches Java bitcoin moiners served up with ads etc. and quarantines them. I've had a few instances of "HTML/Brocoiner" which I understand mines Monero sent to the Naughty Corner. I expect most other AV packages can do the same blocking and prevention.

    591:

    Thanks, Charlie!

    I'll read up on this tomorrow - gotta sign off now.

    592:

    AND that Amd Mrs T practically wet her knickers when the Junta actually invaded It ACTUALLY took the RN to put some spine into her, before she THEN went all ""la Gloire" on us. Well-known, but not spoken of, more's the pity. Another reason to revile her memory.

    593:

    I have been mulling this very subject over for a number of years and, sadly, I don't really feel like I've come any closer to satisfying answers. "I Am Not An Economist", yet BTC appears to me as the largest Ponzi scheme.

    Ever.

    Of note:

    • We don't know the identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto", but we do know that "they" have an estimated 1 MILLION BTC -- worth $11,679,900,000 as of this writing, meaning the Winklevoss Twins are NOT the world's first BTC billionaires and no one knows who owns this "lost fortune". In addition, we now have upwards of 4M BTC which are lost forever and that is only the start should someone decide to manipulate the price with, say, a "tactical EMP".

    • The whole thing came about as an effort to appeal to "privacy advocates", "financial schemers", and other assorted folks, many with long histories of anti-tax/-government leanings. Seeds planted into fertile soil of techno-fetishism, watered with a healthy dose of mystery, and left in a well-lit area promising to "quinto-sexa-septuple your investment!" (My personal Venn diagram crosses some bits of these various groups -- I remember the Clipper Chip & Zimmerman's Dilemma -- but leaning anti-social/misanthropic means avoiding such gatherings.)

    • "No 'there' there", as some above have noted, means it has the illusion of "decentralization", yet the blockchain is an "unforgeable record of ownership". Hence the US Revenuers have begun tracking down the shifty at home...but if you think they will stop there, you don't know the IRS. (see "Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act" [FACTA].) (Note here that I agree, the blockchain tech is the most interesting/useful part, not the "coin". How many people could have fought back against predatory banking/lending scammers if they had been able to show with solidly crypto-signed docs that they had indeed paid off their mortgage?)

    All of this, and a completely self-contained online existence, leads me to belive that the whole thing is a very well-crafted swindle disguised as a math problem.

    So what's the end game? As always, to get rich. Long before we get to the magic 21M BTC maximum (around 2140), all kinds of "fake news events" drive the price to eye-watering heights, "tulip fever" drives things to a cresendo, when suddenly: "Satoshi" decloaks, bathes in some publicity long enough to cash in (while revealing "they" own a lot more than 1/21st of the total pool), and disappears into history.

    So "scenario #1": global Chinese-style crackdowns -- except folks willing to deal in government-approved "digital currency", for weapons sales, benefits payments, etc. "Scenario #2": a rapid global meltdown that brings human civilization to the brink of extinction. All because of a game we play with ourselves, keeping score when there are never any "winners".

    Actually I find Ethereum much more worrying: the notion of "smart contracts" appears to be the next-level bullshit that will drag in the skeptical, but serious-minded sorts that sat out BTC. They will see it as much more business-oriented while ignoring the obvious pitfalls and early start screwups. BTC with a more polished sheen and ready-made for "machine learning" hucksters.

    I keep thinking "this'll be the year Neal Stephenson does a sequel to Cryptonomicon, afterall, how much weirder can it get?" ...hey, wait a minute! You don't think...? Uhmmm, think I need to price a flight to Seattle...

    594:

    David L linked it at #494, and I'm sure Charlie has seen it, but if not: Enter the 'petro': Venezuela to launch oil-backed cryptocurrency

    The Coal Standard earlier in this thread is now a "real" proposal. Oil, not coal, but ... :-)

    “Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency,” backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. Shy on details, but ... reserves are in the ground, a good thing.

    595:

    ...but we do know that "they" have an estimated 1 MILLION BTC -- worth $11,679,900,000 as of this writing... I heard wild speculation during lunch recently that perhaps Satoshi was dead and had had his head frozen, perhaps related to this story: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now (28 Aug 2014) The naive speculation was that frozen heads known to possess (memorized) the key(s) to large amounts of cryptocurrency might be resurrected if the cryptocurrency hadn't been broken yet. As opposed to e.g. being disassembled nanometer by nanometer and then run in Large-N simulations, each trying different methods to get the simulated key(s)-owner to divulge the key(s). Or maybe something multi-simulation similar to the prisoner's dilemma in The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. Or simply reverse engineering the keys from the memories, if extracting memories from the destructive readout data is easier than simulation.

    So out of curiosity, has this been a plot point in any sci-fi stories?

    596:

    In the past couple of months have noticed a definite slow-down on my browser (Firefox) and attributed it to some preferred sites having added more AV ads to their pages.

    Add the Ghostery plug in and be amazed at how much hidden cruft some sites load. Especially sports sites. I suspect many make more off of selling your tracking details than from ads sales directly.

    597:

    Hmmm...okay, I had not considered that: BTC as one of Charlie's "slow currencies". Start it up, grab a bundle at the beginning, "secure it" (e.g. lock the key in a safety deposit box, sealed with biometrics, etc.), ???, and profit!

    It would explain a lot about Disney the past 30+ years: Walt leaves instructions for handling things, gets a "head-cicle", Disney Inc. buys up everything not nailed down, 100 years later Walt's freshly cloned body gets an introduction to the world as "the long-lost great-great-great-grandson" of a multi-trillion dollar global media empire.

    Sort of writes itself...

    A "Black Mirror" episode (a la "White Christmas"): woman with hazy memories of her life before a horrible accident discovers that she's lost everything -- unless she can remember the code to unlock her "E-Coin" account to buy some upgrades during her recovery. 3rd act twist: it's all a VR sim to trick her so an unscrupulous relative can steal the huge fortune.

    Or just wait for a breakthrough in quantum computing.

    598:

    We're nearly to 600 comments and not a single mention of my favourite term for BTC, "Dunning-Kruggerands." I am disappoint.

    599:

    I too was used to having the dipswitch on the floor and disapproved of it being moved to a stalk. But the stalk thing that really seems to catch people out is French headlights for people who aren't French. If you're in a French car and you can not figure out how to turn the headlights on, try twisting the stalks.

    In my younger years a young lady of my acquaintence purchased an Opel GT. The Opal GT had it's handbrake in the conventional European position on the center console to the rear from the gearshift lever.

    I believe the headlights switched on automatically when you pulled back on the lever that rotated them into the deployed position, but if memory serves, it had an American style step button dimmer switch on the floor to the left of the clutch pedal.

    But there was another little pedal right above it where the parking brake pedal would have been in an American car. First time I went to switch on the brights I hit this little pedal by mistake and activated the window washer and wipers.

    600:

    Since we're way past 300 and we've brought up the Falklands strange attractor, let me bring up this article:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-apnewsbreak-border-arrests-plunge-deportation-arrests-soar-2017-12

    I realize that apprehensions are a weak way to measure border crossings. I also realize that this could be fiddled with to make the administration look good. However, we can't ignore the possibility that this is true, no matter how distasteful.

    The only thing I would have liked to see is a comparison of this data excluding October, November, December 2016, and January 2017 (when Trump wasn't in office).

    601:

    Similar plot also used in an episode of Futurama, involving Fry’s savings account, anchovies, and Mom’s Friendly Robot Company.

    602:

    Interesting. Curiously, the only web-site that I regularly visit, which has shown a noticeable slowdown in loading-speed is: ... The Met Office (!) You what?

    603:

    " I don't believe that "the law" is whatever set of rules the people in power choose to enact. I think that there are objectively valid principles of law, just as there are objectively valid principles of engineering or medicine "

    Nonsense.

    You're making the mistake that people make when they say "That's not art!" when they mean "That's bad art!". Or "That's not music!" when they mean "I hate that music!".

    But bad art is art, bad music is music, and bad laws are laws. Live with it.

    Laws are social constructs, and are whatever the hegemonic power that sets the legal framework in a society has made them. That's just what the word means.

    And that's why we have other words like "justice", to mark a difference between "legal" and "moral". As a in: "The judge said 'This ain't a court of justice son, this is a court of law'".

    Now whether there are objective principles from which one can derive moral rules, which we should ideally use to form laws... well, that's a different question.

    604:

    Disappointed that my plan to make money from the crash of Bitcoin with a cryptocurrency called DeadCatCoin has been pre-empted by the somewhat cuter CryptoKitties.

    606:

    The only reason I've ever been grateful for the existence of Apple is that they allowed me to add "nobody on an iphone can read your site" to strengthen the argument.

    Apple is still, despite the app store and Apple Music and iCloud, still fundamentally about the hardware. They want to sell lots of very expensive shiny gadgets; they tend to emit software and services only to the extent that doing so makes their very expensive shiny gadgets more attractive to the customers. (That's not to say that, e.g. the iTunes Store, doesn't make them a fuckton of money; it's just that it makes them single-digit billions, whereas a new iPhone makes them double-digit billions.)

    Which is why you should probably also be glad that they're pushing ad-blocking support into Safari (their web browser) — they realized excessive advertising was making it look like their very expensive shiny gadgets were slow, and they could make them look fast by blocking the crapware. Same explanation was behind Steve Jobs' opposition to Flash; it was going to degrade the battery life of the phones he wanted to sell, thus deterring customers from buying them, so it had to go.

    607:

    Yeah, CryptoKitties is just total WTF?!? territory for me. Monetized virtual tamagotchi in a cryptocurrency bubble?

    608:

    So that was ... an entirely unnecessary war, in which upwards of a thousand soldiers, sailors and airmen died, caused by the Thatcher government fucking up Foreign Relations 101.

    Charlie, are you saying Argentina was justified in starting a war over a canceled deal?

    What the fuck is wrong with you?

    609:

    Are you nuts?

    Did you not read the Thatcher government fucking up Foreign Relations 101?

    Because that's what led up to the whole fiasco. If they hadn't offered the Falklands to Argentina — purely as a cost-saving exercise — the whole mess could have been avoided.

    Even having fucked up, all they needed to do to prevent the invasion was repeat Operation Journeyman. It worked against exactly the same boneheaded junta in Buenos Aires in 1977: it was still a viable move in early 1982.

    Mind you, Las Malvinas should be Argentinian territory anyway: we're stuck with the mess created by 18th century colonialists, and I'm not going to try and justify that.

    610:

    "Even having fucked up, all they needed to do to prevent the invasion was repeat Operation Journeyman."

    Yes. Or even (in the case of the submarines) just SAY they had! That is exactly what I would have done, and kept expecting the gummint to do, when the South Georgia expedition was so clearly testing the waters for invasion. Martin apparently disagrees.

    I disagree that the Falklands should be in Argentina, on moral grounds - obviously they should on practical ones. The question is whether the rights of the population should override the rights of the flag planters. There is a similar (and MUCH messier) situation in Crimea.

    611:

    Re: '... similar (and MUCH messier) situation in Crimea.'

    And Palestine ... and probably most of the rest of the planet on pretty well every continent* that was ever 'colonized' and/or had its borders redrawn after losing the 'Great War of [enter your culturally significant war of choice]'.

    • Okay, except Antarctica --- for now.
    612:

    Re: Falklands

    Okay read the bit that says 'after a party of 50 Argentine "scientists" landed on the island of South Thule'.

    Wondering whether these might have been real honest-to-diety scientists whose expedition was used as a screen/excuse because there's a bird sanctuary (island) nearby that attracts scientists from around the world. Don't recall the name only that they issue stamps that are very collectible, plus no year-round residents.

    613:

    Yep, I remember learning of William Spiers Bruce alongside Mawson and Shackleton many many years ago - he basically kicked off the whole scientific expedition to Antarctica idea while everyone else was after bragging rights to the Pole.

    And Markham and the RGS hated his guts, and forced him into the arms of the Argentinians for aid while he was down there. He set up a base in the South Orkneys in 1903, handed it over to the Argentinians in 1904 and they've continually operated it as a scientific station ever since.

    That basically predates any settlement other than on the Falklands themselves, so from an outsiders point of view, it's pretty clear Argentina has rights to the group.

    Britain didn't bother putting anything in place until 1947, and was still more interested in "firsts". Heck, even Shackleton had to go to the Chileans for aid to rescue his men.

    614:

    Fifty scientists? That's some impressive funding for ornithologists right there!

    615:

    You have missed my point. I am referring to ANOTHER country that claims a territory based on one interpretation of history, flatly in conflict to the wishes of the majority of the population and another, equally valid, interpretation of history by the country to which they claim to belong. In the case of the Falklands, there has been effectively no dispossession of inhabitants (as distinct from government installations) in the historical era.

    Personally, I think handing them over to France is as ethical a solution as any - look at their history to see why :-)

    616:

    Re: 'Fifty scientists?'

    Yep - it's possible. Have you any idea how many not-for-profit birding foundations there are? And many of them provide funding for scientists. Some of this may be attributable to the fact that birding/bird-watching was the fastest growing hobby/outdoor activity/sport in NorAm for the past couple of decades. (Found out about this when I volunteered at a local 'xxx in Bloom' - name varies by country.) Also, the 50 ornithologists could have been a mini conference-cum-research outing that included visiting PIs, postdocs and grad students.

    Noticed this in one of today's Nature news email headlines:

    http://grist.org/article/bitcoin-could-cost-us-our-clean-energy-future/

    BTW, the paragraph below answers one of my questions: at this rate, how long before we run out of energy.

    'In just a few months from now, at bitcoin’s current growth rate, the electricity demanded by the cryptocurrency network will start to outstrip what’s available, requiring new energy-generating plants. And with the climate conscious racing to replace fossil fuel-base plants with renewable energy sources, new stress on the grid means more facilities using dirty technologies. By July 2019, the bitcoin network will require more electricity than the entire United States currently uses. By February 2020, it will use as much electricity as the entire world does today.'

    Tying in on the energy front, we also have this freebie that many here might want to read:

    https://www.nature.com/collections/vhmqpbnstc?WT.mc_id=EMI_NA_1117_Energytransitions

    617:

    Not sure about measuring power draw, but I may have mentioned I run firefox, and do not run it without noscript, which blocks all javascript that I don't allow, either temporarily or permanently. antipope's permanent, a link to a silly story in, say, the Sun (or do I repeat myself?), a few temporarily. And I never allow google analytics. Thank you, I don't care to hand them more info about me.

    And some pages, jeez, I click my way into the noscript menu, and the number of sites "needed" for the page to be what the owner of the page wants... 15? 20? more? And some only appear after you allow others.

    I don't allow anything with ad in it, or names like gigya (an actual site), not being a caught fish.

    618:

    Re:'... handing them over to France is as ethical a solution as any - look at their history to see why :-)'

    Appreciate the clarification. Hmmm ... France has managed to write a ton of history, maybe you can provide a bigger (more specific) hint?

    619:

    Don't get me started about javascript. I've seen plenty of pages that could have been written in plain ol' html, but they force in huge, bad javascript, because "that's how it's done, right?".

    Btw, my actual home page has, at the bottom, that it will load faster than almost anyone... and "this page proudly built in vi".

    I know, I know, alt.religion.editors is over that way....

    620:

    Antarctica, huh? Wait till I finish my FST (Famous Secret Theory), and set up my base on the Moon, and claim all of it....

    Which brings to mind a conversation from last night, where I was reminded... how true-faannish am I? Sitting with my first wife, in the Franklin Inst Science Museum in Philly, and watching, real-time, Neil stepping down... and think "please, please, a tentacle, a robot arm, please, tap him on the shoulder, 'May I see your visa please? And could you move your vehicle? This is a no parking zone..."

    621:

    You need to sit back and reconsider before you post. A lot. Not only did what I'm responding to ramble, but it still doesn't fix my complaints.

    For one, I haven't spoken AT ALL about "the good people". That's some kind of ideological or religious judgment. I said society. Speaking as a socialist, there are plenty of people I certainly don't consider "good people", but that doesn't mean they don't have rights and responsibilities, just that I'd prefer they do them somewhere else.

    You say you're using the word socialist in a more-or-less the way the libertidiots do; unquoted, etc, it does not come off that way, it comes off as a sock puppet saying that.

    Tell me why I shouldn't put some of that as, for example, "fascists" or "the nobility", or just "upper class scum" think that Their People deserve all the breaks, and the rest of these people are just ignorant peasants?

    Hint: the first step in getting out of a hole is to STOP DIGGING.

    622:

    Re: Franklin Inst

    Looked up their site to see if Neil Degrasse Tyson was visiting or maybe Neal Stephenson because I like both. Anyways, found neither. In fact, could hardly find anything because their site is layer upon layer of nothing. Anyone know if Jerry Seinfeld has taken up or started a school for web design?

    624:

    Re: Antarctica

    For now Antarctica is the only location on the planet where 12 countries (including super-powers) are apparently still co-existing in peace. Let's leave it that way as a bright shiny example of what is possible, okay?

    How about one of Jupiter's moons instead? By 2150, we'll probably need to mine Jupiter's atmosphere for helium, so you'll make tons of $$$ by setting up a base camp nearby.

    625:

    I dunno - I just went there, and it's not what I'd do, but it's shrug. Great place. Always loved the hall of trains (transportation?) with the master being the Texas-type ex-Pannsy RR steam loco....

    It used to be better. In fact, in the sixties and seventies, they had, across the street, their own research institute... which I worked at as a lab tech. sigh Long gone.

    They were founded in the 1820, and in 1829, the Hartford Steam Boiler (insurance company these days) engaged them to find the cause of so many steam boiler explosions on early riverboats.

    And yes, it was started with money from the estate of a well-known American....

    626:

    Re: France & Falklands

    Thanks for the laugh! -- internet-challenged, yep! Actually I was wondering whether you were referring to some more obscure bit of French history.

    The Wikipedia entry makes me wonder whether this island's history inspired pterry's Jingo. That is, when your generals have no current war going on and really, really want to try out their newest strategies and war toys, always have an unpopulated rock in some distant part of the planet that you can send them to. Also works when you need to incite nationalism because the elected head of gov't has no leadership ability by which to unite the country or any charisma with which to beguile citizens to follow him/her.

    627:

    Whitroth noted: "Don't get me started about javascript. I've seen plenty of pages that could have been written in plain ol' html, but they force in huge, bad javascript, because "that's how it's done, right?".

    I've had that argument with my son: Son: "Dad, your site sucks. It's, like antequated... like 19th century antequated." Me: "And yet it works perfectly without relying on anyone else's Web site, doesn't track you, and loads faster than 99% of the sites on the Web. Plus it provides useful information." Son: "Whatever. It's still antequated."

    I think what you're seeing with javascript and Flash and etc. is economic determinism: If you're a freelance Web designer and can earn $100 for implementing HTML or $500 for implementing HTML + javascript + Flash, there's precious little incentive to just implement HTML.

    628:

    Could well be. Your last sentence makes me wonder how safe Sealand is - it should be assailable within the MoD's budget :-)

    629:

    Re: Sealand

    Hmmm ... the UK gov't could legally challenge its high court ruling of 1968 which said that Sealand was not part of the UK because, after all, the UN did change the sovereign waters limit to 22.2km in 1982. However, this opens up the box marked 'interesting' because such a move could provide a legal precedent for allowing foreign law (UN) to supersede British home law/rule.

    'But as the court ruled that the platform (which Bates was now calling "Sealand") was outside British territorial limits, being beyond the then 3-nautical-mile (6 km) limit of the country's waters, the case could not proceed.'

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand#Occupation_and_establishment

    'Territorial waters or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,[1] is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state.'

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters

    630:

    Congratulations, your memory is spot on! A 1971 Opel GT was my car after the VW Beetle. Stinking impossible dual carburetors and a fiberglass body that a small American town body shop coped with by pop-riveting new rear-end skin on after I was rear-ended on the way home from high school, but Great Ghu I loved that thing.

    631:

    I have a hard time believing that the author of 'Accelerando' would have a hard time with this. I bet if it were lobsters instead of kitties you'd never have even noticed.

    632:

    This likely covers ground also seen somewhere in the 600+ posts super, but I've thought of this often, and I think the 'libert'arian/racist connexion in the U.S. has these notable causes:

    0.) The Federal government's coming-out against legal segregation and the racist system it bulwarked.

    1.) Open racism's becoming particularly tabou among the educational, government, and large business elites, of which about 2.5/3.0 are deeply distrusted and disdained by most 'libert'arians.

    2.) Though when any ills of our mixed-economy nation are mentioned the answer is that we have nothing near a Free Market, in other contexts we are held to have something close enough to one that it ought to be defended, in which case black and brown poverty were best attributable to inherent defects—`The Market cannot fail people….'.

    3.) Both racists and free market absolutists believe that when it comes down to it there are only certain people who deserve to live better, quite possibly substantively better, than other people. The saner marketeers (as opposed to the marketolatrous) allow as how this detetmination will ever be perfect, but then again I've heard racists allow as a few black folk may be smarter or more decent than some few white folk, but playing the percentages…. In the end, though, both are willing to see their preferred sorting mechanism as eminently and dependably just. American liberals and more mainstream conservatives are both not comfortable with depending on a single sorting mechanism and don't scruple the worst consequences of winding-up in the wrong bin,perhaps with an eye toward the fallibility of mechanisms, the rôle of chance, or the advisability of considering that oneself might not end up in the best bin….

    4.) Similarly, some people think liberty, like marriage, will be devalued if the wrong people get to play.

    5.) Liberty and freedom aren't necessarily identical, but if you value freedom above all else, the free reign those at the top of a hierarchy enjoy can be intoxicatingly attractive—I think this is part of populism's atteaction to fascism, as most followers can never end up all that free as long as they still gave jobs and spouses and children, but they can vicariously enjoy the Leader's absolute freedom,viz esp. that to hurt whom he will with impunity.

    633:

    Charlie has probably already seen this, but it might be as new to others here as it was to me:

    "Blockchain-based competitor to Wikipedia proposed". Given that one of their arguments is that Wikipedia is too interested in covering history and doesn't give enough space to "bloggers [and] social media stars"...

    Actually, for the sake of (my) sanity, I'm going to put this in the same bucket as the aforementioned cryptokitties. That means assuming that the founders don't actually think this stuff is a good idea, they've just decided separating credulous people from money is a good way to make a living. I imagine there were tulip-breeders doing the same at the height of that bubble.

    634:

    I'm guessing there's a couple of reasons why tiny specks of radioactive material aren't built in to computers and mobile devices as a source of unpredictability for cryptographic purposes, either the cost, or maybe the intgerference it would cause on electronic parts nearby. The cost can't be much of a constraint, though, since home smoke detectors contain americium. Electronic interference would seem preventable by lead foil shielding or a similar cheap fix. Maybe the fact no-one's bothering with it indicates a lack of consumer demand for cryptographically enhanced security in the first place, at least not on a large enough scale to support mass production. Or possibly there's a flaw in my understanding of the whole randomness issue as it relates to encryption.

    635:

    Some promo slogans:

    A Compendium of Alternate Facts --- Live!

    See Reality Change as You Watch!

    You Too Can Make (Write) History!

    Like a River, Facts Are Never the Same Twice!

    636:

    I once listened to the diagnosis of a particular error in a device that turned out to be due to some materials having been produced/extracted/processed in or near equipment that had been used in a location in Russia, the result being a small batch having higher-than-normal radioactivity, and certain classes of errors as a result.

    The presenter in question was the manager of the team, and was delighted he got to approve the purchase of a geiger counter.

    637:

    Keith Masterson noted: "I'm guessing there's a couple of reasons why tiny specks of radioactive material aren't built in to computers and mobile devices as a source of unpredictability for cryptographic purposes"

    This won't be done because, among other risks, some crazy terrorist might collect several thousand of these computers and build a nuke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn). Wouldn't want that, would we?

    Keith: "The cost can't be much of a constraint, though, since home smoke detectors contain americium."

    A better solution would be to use cosmic rays or other exotic thingies that seem largely random. Build a detector into every computational device sold, then link them together as in SETI@home and the protein-folding crowdsourcing projects and who knows how much science could get done?

    638:

    Jesus I have never read such utter bullshit in my life. String a few words like exponential together with a few charts and suddenly the world is ending? FFS.

    Not going to happen. Ignoring the actual flaws in the story just think how much CPU/FGPA/ASIC production it would take to "exhaust the world's electricity supply".

    I'd take Charlie's estimate at the start of the thread with a pinch of salt - this one's worth a couple of Thorium-Salt reactors full.

    639:

    SFreader noted: "Like a River, Facts Are Never the Same Twice!"

    That's the Copenhagen interpretation: when you observe the facts, you change the outcome. Q.E.D. GDR

    640:

    Charlie ... really! Bollocks. SEE ALSO EC @ 610 Or The battle off the Falklands in ? 1915 ? ( 1914? )

    I assume you are simply shit-stirring for fun. We have more imprtasnt things to worry about, like the Jerusalem fuck-up & the EU fuck-up, right now ...

    641:

    Again - bollocks Look up Battle of Falklands - naval WW I encounter Britain had a small naval base in the islands, which turned out to be useful So your statement about nothing before 1947 is pure unadultereted tosh, OK?

    642:

    AND Replying to my self @ 640 / 641 Re: Falklands - read the wiki entry - everyone - PLEASE?

    Anyone's knee-jerk reaction that .. "it was a Brit colony, therfore the Brits are evil occupiers" is snmply wrong, especially if there were no original inhabitants - OK? Though I agree with other posters, that the madwoman was, well, mad. And Jim Callaghan, the last PM we have had who was NOT a traitor, actually, got it right. [ Yes, I've decided that May has joined the list of: Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown as a traitors, I'm afraid ... what worries me is that Corbyn is a traitor even before the Mandarinate get to him ... ]

    643:

    reasons why tiny specks of radioactive material aren't built in to computers and mobile devices as a source of unpredictability for cryptographic purposes

    ... not least that there are better sources of unpredictability already available. I have a physical dongle (http://onerng.info/) that works quite well and has the advantage that it's not NSA-approved where the one that's built into every CPU has likely been tweaked by all and sundry.

    Remember that modern computers are already so complex that the "hidden CPU" in Intel processors was largely ignored until some crippling vulnerabilities were discovered, at which point "how do you upgrade the firmware" became an important question to which the answer was "that's not firmware, that's a proper OS (MINIX) and you can only update it by returning the silicon".

    So adding a few thousand or few million transistors to provide a cryptographically secure source of random numbers is quite possible and in fact necessary to implement the secure encryption that keeps users away from the hardware (mot notoriously to implement DRM, but also signing OS installs etc as part of the "secure BIOS"... again, that's secure against the end user)

    645:

    Did someone say "Insanely Over-hyped Bubble of Doom!"?

    2:15pm EST

    3:38pm EST

    5:54pm EST

    So $1K jump in 4 hours...I'm saying BTC tops $63k by 12/25 and crashes under $100 by 1/5. Of course that all assumes we haven't blown up the planet in some kind of nuclear religio-political hub-bub.

    Great Cthulhu, come home, all is forgiven.

    646:

    I see that Steam have declared they're no longer accepting bitcoin, because the value fluctuates too much and the transaction fees are too high. It seems likely that other non-blackmarket retailers who allow bitcoin for purchases will follow suit, for the same reasons. A currency that can't be trusted to hold its value for the time it takes to make a funds transfer is of rather limited use...

    647:

    Give an entitled asshat an inch and they'll take the whole damn ruler...

    While widely-read and familiar with many socio-political & economic theories, I find myself at a crossroads: constantly bewildered by the tidal wave of stupidity and raw lack of common sense of late. Not to mention the appalling lack of humanity and simple compassion. Any suggestions for books, movies, filmstrips, audio cassettes with the "cue tone" beeps, Atlantean stone tablets, etc. which might point to some new clues or even glimmers of hope?

    Scandanavia, Tierra del Fuego (apparently I missed an earlier discussion over the Falklands that I don't know enough about, so seems safer to avoid the topic and the islands), or the Orkneies are all starting to look good. Maybe I'll volunteer to man the front lines in Antarctica, just waiting for Sedmelluq & Groth-Golka to surface...

    648:

    That valve bitcoin rejection letter, so sad.

    Obviously the volatility is a problem.

    But transaction fee peaked at $20 last week!

    !

    649:

    Greg, I wasn't talking about the Falklands, I was talking about the South Orkneys, which are part of the Falklands Dependency.

    Argentina's claims there basically predate anyone else on the basis that they have one of the oldest bases in Antarctica, let alone the fact it has been continuously operated.

    And it was built by a Scotsman.

    Britain has fair claim to half the Falklands, Argentina has inherited the Spanish claim to the other half.

    650:

    OTOH it seems to me that the Battle of the Falklands only happened there because we were there in the first place, so it wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't been :)

    In terms of the question which the Falklands war addressed - ie. "status quo" vs. "hand the lot to Argentina" - I think "status quo" is the right answer; but the only strong reason I have for thinking that is that that's what the people who live there want. I think the balance of the original period of "it's ours" - "no, it's ours" - "but you all went home, so it's ours now" etc. probably comes out in favour of Britain, but not strongly enough to get worked up about it. Unless some expert in predicting future British naval policy gives me a reason to think otherwise, I reckon that if the population wasn't there then it simply wouldn't be worth the hassle.

    Then I reflect that there are fewer than 3000 people there anyway and aren't we choosing an incredibly inefficient way to allow them to continue to be British? We could evacuate them all on one ship, and resettle them in Caithness because it looks the same and has the same kind of crappy climate and they probably wouldn't notice the difference. And it probably can actually absorb 3000 people who think Thatcher is God (insert Cthulhu joke here) without affecting who wins the seat. Then we could send an ambassador who looks like Graham Chapman to tell Argentina "this is getting silly, if you really want 5000 square miles of penguin shit you can have it".

    On the serious side, I've just happened across this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9883042/UK-considered-allowing-Argentina-Falklands-naval-base-two-weeks-before-war.html

    The headline seems to be a bit of a stretch on what you can conclude from a couple of "scribbled notes", but it does seem to support the notion that they really aren't that important to us.

    651:

    What do you mean by "ad-blocking support"? Adblockers have been available either natively in the browser or as very popular add-ons for yonks. The same browser functionality (ie. JS) that allows the more evil ads to exist also allows all ads to be blocked; it's "just" a case of writing the right add-on code. My complaint isn't that writing that code isn't possible, it is that writing it is a pain in the arse and getting more so. But given that people do write it, and therefore that problem is solved already, I don't understand how what Apple are doing is going to increase its availability to the majority who don't write it.

    652:

    Your penultimate sentence is the correct answer: no one cares.

    Add-ons are available for those few who do care, but they don't use Geiger counters because that technique works far better for explaining the concept to an audience who are probably already familiar with it as a source of fundamental randomness from the Schroedinger's cat thought-experiment, than it does for a practical implementation. Analogue electronic devices that want a source of randomness usually just use thermal noise.

    653:

    Your last paragraph: I don't think it's that; I think that how it works behind the scenes is very low on the importance scale of whoever places the order, because they don't understand why it might not be. I think that whoever executes the order also doesn't understand why it might not be, or anything else they're doing for that matter, and just copies and pastes code from sites that provide code samples for "How to Write Sites that Geoff Hart Jr likes" :)

    I think this because I have seen far too many things like <body style="display: none;"> and a script executing later on to delete the attribute (which doesn't work because it's thrown an unhandled exception 400 lines previously), or the insult-to-injury version where the attribute isn't there in the HTML but a script executing earlier on (which does work) adds it. Or pages containing nothing but var pageContent = "(complete preformatted HTML)" plus a link to an external script to write it to the document (which doesn't work). I can't see that sort of thing - and it's a very common thing - as anything other than the output of someone who is just blindly following recipes with zero understanding of what they're doing or how the whole thing actually works.

    654:

    The cost can't be much of a constraint, though, since home smoke detectors contain americium.

    Try and legally dispose of one in the US and you'll see a hidden cost.

    655:

    I can't say what OGH was thinking, but having ad-blocking features integrated in the browser is markedly different from having one as an add-on. While you and I know how to write our own extensions, most people don't know how to do that and I suspect most of people browsing the web don't even know they can install extensions in their browsers, let alone figure out how to do that.

    I think having that kind of basic functionality in the browser by default is the Right Thing to do, if only to get more people to use the ad-blockers.

    I also think that you are probably thinking on the wrong level about why the web pages are made to be utter crap today instead of simple HTML and CSS. I suspect that the main culprit is not the people writing the web pages, or as the modern term seems to be, 'generating content', but the makers of the frameworks used on the web. From what I have seen of how modern web pages are made, almost nobody really writes HTML or CSS anymore - it's all done on some kind of framework provided by somebody or other. It can be a programming platform or a Content Mangling (really: Management) System, but mostly people just put 'content' somewhere and it then mangled to something resembling HTML and forwarded to the browser. In many cases the 'pages' don't exist as .html files on any disk anymore, but are generated on the fly when requested.

    From what I have seen of the frameworks, most suck in many ways, especially if your ideal is pretty static files of HTML and CSS served from the disk. Many of them have nice features and there are reasons to use them, but often it's very difficult to have just these parts.

    656:

    Talking of mad, &/or traitorous &/or incompetent politicians (as we were ...) The "Indie" is not a tory-lurving screed, but this piece on Corbyn seems to be on the mark unfortunately.

    It is well-worth remembering the JC is agreeing wiht the marxists that being in the EU is bad - he will welcome an EU exit, preferably a "hard" one that will enable him to build a Chavez/Maduro version of "socialism in one country", thus beggaring & ruing us even worse that the almost-as-horrible version beong backed by the tory ultra-right. In fact, those against the EU now are the same as when we had the referendum back in the 1970's ... the marxists & the fascists & both their sets of fellow-travellers.

    Some local councils. councillors & MP's are being repeatedly attacked by the Militan momenetum members inside their ranks - Haringey have voted through a very controversial & almost-certainly-corrupt land redevelopment deal, because momentum are more concerned with ideological purity than the welfare of the people they are supposed to be representing. My own, superb MP, with one of the largest majorities anywhere ( Down to her personal popularity & her active public campagning for real social justice ) is being constantly attacked by these fuckwits.

    658:

    A bitcoin is generated every ten minutes (the computational difficulty is scaled according to total mining power to keep generation frequency roughly constant). If cited figures for BTC network are correct, that means that every btc needs about 600MWh of energy. At 10k$/btc energy must cost less than 16$/MWh in order not to lose money. To my knowledge, energy cost in most countries is above that.

    659:

    I just came across ... This fascinating noticeboard discussion Comparing supposed & real "freedom" in the US & UK. Comments, anyone? Charlie - you're familiar with the USA? Heteromeles?

    660:

    Typical bulk electrical power prices in the UK are about £50/MWhr on the grid.

    A lot of Bitcoin mining operations (multiple AntMiner 9 rigs in large racks) in China are based close to small and medium-sized hydro power stations (anything from a few hundred kW up to a few MW) in remote highland areas where the electricity is cheap and hundreds of kilometres from anyone who can actually use it for industry or domestic purposes, so-called "stranded" power. It's more efficient and cost-effective to export that power as Bitcoins than to build extensive grid connections to those little hydro stations to unstrand their power capacity. A lot of wind and solar generation in China is similarly stranded, being located in the west of the country while the main demand for power is in the east and along the Pacific coast and that capacity is also probably ripe for Bitcoin mining too (although the infrastructure costs are a lot greater).

    661:

    This is uterly totally bonkers. How long can this carry on for before the inevitable crash, either because the BTC bubble bursts or "we" run out of electrical power? I'm trying to think of an historical parallel, where resources were purloined for fake pueposes & money-grabbing & can't come up with one. Is this actaully a "new thing"?

    662:

    Writing from Western Missouri, sounds about right. We've got a lot of wannabe aristocrats whose only thought about unjust systems is to try and avoid entrapping the "Right People" in them. BTW, I know the Tories aren't as far gone as our Republicans, but from here, it looks like they're taking the same road, keep your eyes open.

    663:

    Think of it as yet another reprise of "The Upper Class Twit of the Year Contest".

    664:

    I have a hard time believing that the author of 'Accelerando' would have a hard time with this.

    The author of 'Accelerando' was someone else; I began writing it in 1998, nearly 20 years ago. That's a life sentence in some jurisdictions!

    Moreover, there's a difference between seeing that something is possible and considering it to be desirable or sensible.

    665:

    Thanks for the clarification. I was suspecting something like that, but those energy sources have low marginal costs for production, the levelized energy cost should be still higher than 16$/MWh. So who paid for the investment? China government (directly or through subsidies)? Or miners themselves, hoping to recover the investment in the long run? In any case, the BTC network is inherently fragile. A state level agent (China, EU) could destroy the network simply by throwing enough computational power to render antieconomical mining. Probably they could just declare the intent to obtain the effect.

    Also BTC seems to be no more usable as payment method, Valve declared they will not accept anymore BTC as payment method due to high transaction fees (if I understood well there is a limited number of transactions possible per hour, and the higher the computational power of the network the higher the cost per transaction)

    666:

    I'm guessing somewhat but there was thing in Revolution-era China during the end of the Mao period called "The Great Leap Forward" when a lot of localised industrialisation was carried out, village-sized steel-making plants and the like and it's possible these remote hydro installations were built then, a bit like the US' TVA operation back in the 1930s.

    Once a hydro facility is in place the fuel is free, maintenance is not that expensive and if someone else paid for the capital costs of building it in the first place the electricity generated is very low-cost (it might be intermittent, only running at full power during rainy periods). Getting that cheap electricity out of its strand to a major conurbation would be expensive, exporting it as blockchain entries is cheap as chips.

    667:

    Can't leave these guys alone for a minute: BTC peeks over $15.1k USD, nearly $2k USD in the past 24 hours

    I may have been too optimistic with my timelines...

    668:

    Even having fucked up, all they needed to do to prevent the invasion was repeat Operation Journeyman. It worked against exactly the same boneheaded junta in Buenos Aires in 1977: it was still a viable move in early 1982.

    The problem with that whole "we sent a submarine in 1977, and they didn't invade the Falklands" interpretation relies on there actually being an Argentine plan to invade: at the time, there wasn't. Claiming that a deployed SSN would have solved everything, seems to be to be a combination of optimism and 20:20 hindsight, and doesn't really stand up under analysis...

    While David Owen might wave JOURNEYMAN as an example of how awesome he was as a Foreign Secretary (he does have a case of FIGJAM), taking a year to "prevent an invasion" that wasn't actually planned and if you look at the ROE for JOURNEYMAN, it was "don't start anything, don't escalate, withdraw if they shoot at you". Hardly a deterrent.

    Note that the presence of the JOURNEYMAN task force (it took a year after the discovery of the Argentinian landing to send the three vessels; then they hung around for three months and went home) achieved nothing to affect Argentinian behaviour - the 'fifty scientists' remained on South Thule for the next six years, until the end of the Falklands War. At best, it could be said to have prevented the expansion of the South Thule occupation.

    Note also that planning for Operation ROSARIO didn't begin until Galtieri took over in December 1981; that the drive for it came from the rather nationalist Admiral Anaya who was convinced that the British might posture, but wouldn't fight; and that the Suez Crisis, the annexation of Goa, the UDI of Rhodesia, all indicated that possession was nine-tenths of the law, and that military response was unlikely.

    I do hope that in a decade's time, we won't be concluding that everyone's unwillingness to respond with force to Putin's land-grab in Crimea and invasion of the Donbass, meant that any actions of his in the Baltic States were perfectly foreseeable in light of Trump's remarks about Article V and friendliness towards the Kremlin (note that there are now several hundred lightly-equipped troops from each of several NATO nations, based in the Baltic as a tripwire - is this paranoia, or a successful JOURNEYMAN?).

    669:

    There are lots of questions like this on Quora. Usually posted by anonymous trolls or obviously fake IDs. If you want to see more follow the topic. Confession: I spend too much tome on Quora to the detriment of my allotment.

    670:

    I have a question pertaining to this article:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/27/china-ruthless-campaign-evict-beijings-migrant-workers-condemned

    To what extent are Beijing's actions different from what the West did with its own slum clearance program?

    671:

    Nojay wondered: "I'm guessing somewhat but there was thing in Revolution-era China during the end of the Mao period called "The Great Leap Forward" when a lot of localised industrialisation was carried out, village-sized steel-making plants and the like and it's possible these remote hydro installations were built then, a bit like the US' TVA operation back in the 1930s."

    Probably not? That is, it depends on which specific power plants you mean. China is currently undergoing several enormous modernization plans. One involves shutting down heavily polluting plants in the east so that they can be relocated to the west, and rebuilt using more modern (less polluting) technology. This is also part of the Western China Economic Development plan, which is intended to provide more employment opportunies for residents of western China and reduce the need to emigrate to Beijing (see below). A second major initiative is to move away from coal as the primary power source, hence the creation of enormous renewable energy projects throughout China. The West is a major site for such projects because the natural resources (huge mountains to generate hydro power, barren areas with strong winds for most of the year, low population densities that avoid the NIMBY problem) are ideal for such projects.

    In terms of "stranding" the power, there are obviously plans to hook up the power sources both to the newly relocated industries in the West and to older industries and the domestic sector in the east. The problem, of course, is that it's necessary to create very long transmission corridors to get the power to where it's needed. There are also projects afoot to do this, including a ginormous plan to improve the entire western transportation infrastructure, but even at Chinese investment levels, the huge size of the country means this will take a while.

    Ioan reported the problem of Beijing's efforts to move out migrant workers. This is also something undergoing a huge transition. In China, you receive government papers that guarantee you access to social benefits in the area where you're born -- but these papers won't work when you move to another area; if you can't get new paperwork, you lose access to benefits such as medical care, housing, and schools for your children. On the one hand, China has looked the other way during an urbanization process that has brought tens of millions of immigrants from impoverished rural areas into cities because this flow of workers is driving their economic expansion. On the other hand, all these unwashed immigrants with no access to government services represents a huge inconvenience to the government that can't really be ignored. There are efforts underway to legitimize these workers and thereby protect their role in the economy, but as you might imagine, this doesn't work so well when the left hand and right hand aren't talking to each other.

    673:

    I just came across ...
    This fascinating noticeboard discussion
    Comparing supposed & real "freedom" in the US & UK.

    I didn't read them all, but I noticed there were few responses from the U.S.

    One thing I thought posters repeatedly got wrong was citing "jaywalking" laws as an instance where the UK had more "freedom" than the U.S., which I thought odd because only a few large, highly congested cities in the northern U.S. actually have "jaywalking" laws (and fewer still enforce them). In most of the U.S., in smaller cities & towns, it's "pedestrians have the right of way"

    The one place I have been stopped by the minions of law and order for crossing in the middle of a block was in Glasgow.

    Other than that, I didn't think the posters got much wrong.

    The one telling comment for me was one that suggested Americans concentrate too much on the government and aren't aware of how much non-state actors curtail our freedoms.

    674:

    In the time since this post was written, Bitcoin's value has almost doubled.

    675:

    I'd guess that most of it is "I want you to write it this way" from a manager who's telling them what tools to use.

    For that matter, what several others are complaining about, don't forget the "popular" (by management) tools, like gag ColdFusion, and the crap it generates.

    676:

    You've missed the alternate view: 1. The GOP's original base were middle-class, wealth. After WWII, when civil rights started coming in, what were known as the Dixiecrats got strong (remember, it was Republican President Eisenhower who sent in the troops to enforce desegregation). Then came the mid-sixties. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, which he's helped ram through, he's alleged to have said that the Democrats had lost the South for a generation. Instead, the GOP took it as a godsend, and have clutched them to their bosoms as hard as they could, and the more the racists and the funnymentalist evangelicals went more and more extreme, they pandered to them, because that was the only way they'd win enough votes to stay in power. 2. The right-wing control or semi-control of the media. Murdoch is public enemy #1 on that, telling people 24x7x365.25 that it's not their fault they're not better off, it's all the fault of the LIBRUL ELITE (and all them race-traitor creeps up north)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and be afraid, be very afraid, vote for us and we'll lock 'em all up....

    At this point, I'm getting really frustrated, partly from looking at the news, and the horrors the GOP are working hard to effectively make a coup....

    677:

    So build something the size of a CMOS battery, replaceable, and make a place to install it, and in that, put the innards of a smoke detector.

    Or you could use a smidge of radium (no, I don't have a watch whose hands glow in the dark....)

    678:

    I've been saying since at least my early 20s that there is no such thing as "common sense", the only thing that's common is stupidity.

    And too much of society, with the collaboration of the media and the right, to use a line from a storyteller long ago, "ain't got the sense they was born with."

    679:

    Thought this might interest action video gamers, game developers ...

    https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2017155

    Abstract

    'The hippocampus is critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that action video game players have reduced grey matter within the hippocampus. A subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in participants using non-spatial memory strategies. Conversely, participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game.'

    FYI - The caudate nucleus (which has been linked to OCD) is associated with 'non-spatial memory'. Article suggests that there's a trade-off between which of these two regions is strengthened depending on strategy used.

    And why you want a healthy entorhinal cortex:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entorhinal_cortex

    Excerpt: 'In 2005, it was discovered that entorhinal cortex contains a neural map of the spatial environment in rats.[1] In 2014, John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, partly because of this discovery.[2]'

    See also 'grid cells' which to my non-sci understanding comes closest to a biological example of why the holographic universe model might be true. Also, probably why a 'memory palace' system for memorizing important data works.

    680:

    The GOP's original base were middle-class, wealth. After WWII, when civil rights started coming in, what were known as the Dixiecrats got strong (remember, it was Republican President Eisenhower who sent in the troops to enforce desegregation). Then came the mid-sixties. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, which he's helped ram through, he's alleged to have said that the Democrats had lost the South for a generation.

    Everyone concentrates on the GOP's embrace of southern white racists in Nixon's "Southern Strategy". The roots of GOP racism go back much farther, to the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow. Racial exclusion from housing and jobs begins in the north even before Federal troops are removed from the south by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.

    Eisenhower received as much resistance from western Republicans as he did from southern Democrats over Little Rock, and it was Arizona GOP Senator Goldwater who led opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

    681:

    As an aside about Bitcoin... Keynes had the very best quite about financial bubbles, which is that:

    "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

    It goes with a Minksy quote:

    "A financial crisis happens more slowly than you expect, and then more quickly than anyone expects".

    Identifying a bubble - asset prices higher than they should be with everyone buying in because everyone is buying in - is the easier bit. To make money out of that knowledge you need to guess when it will burst.

    There are many, many stories of funds getting it right in seeing a bubble (dot-com boom of the late 90s, housing book of the early 2000s, credit boom in 2000-2008, etc), betting heavily that it will burst year after year, and finally going broke or giving up just before it bursts.

    682:

    Neither party was ever great on race. But the African-American/Republican realignment started well before Nixon. For some horrific reading look up the on the ground stories about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. How that was handled by the republicans both nationally in the aftermath with broken promises, and particularly locally during it (and what it did to shape those who would be building movements and organizing African American communities in decades to come) marks it as one of those events with a very long tail. And the actual stories themselves are just bonkers

    683:

    Re: BitCoin

    So when it's time to cash out, who exactly is going to have that type of 'real money' sitting around to hand over? And if I were a gov't, this could be a non-violent cost-effective way of deep-sixing an 'industry' that's been linked to organized crime, terrorism and assorted other nasty stuff.

    Maybe keep an eye on the Nikkei to see BitCoin's impact on stocks. As you may recall, Japan OK'd cryptocurrency on Sept 29/17. Today's stock headlines not good but it's too soon to identify specific causes. (And DT's antics only muddy things more.)

    https://www.reuters.com/article/japan-stocks-close/nikkei-in-worst-fall-for-8-1-2-months-middle-east-concerns-weigh-idUSL3N1O62I5

    685:

    You don't know when a bubble will burst, but you always know when it HAS burst. If you can just predict what will climb out of the aftermath you can shop the bargain basement and then ride up the slope. You just have to be patient and not too greedy. I cashed out well before all those crises you mentioned, and bought in right after. For example, I bought a bunch of Amazon stock in 2001 at seven dollars a share. On the other hand, I sold it later when I thought it must surely have run its course--at fifty. Septupled my money, how could I possibly complain? Don't think this strategy could possibly apply to botcoin, because there's a good chance it's not going to climb out of the aftermath alive. Those who bought tulips in 1638 still haven't gotten rich.

    686:

    "You need to sit back and reconsider before you post. A lot."

    Okay, if you say so.

    "...That's some kind of ideological or religious judgment. I said society. Speaking as a socialist, there are plenty of people I certainly don't consider "good people", but that doesn't mean they don't have rights and responsibilities, just that I'd prefer they do them somewhere else. [...] "Tell me why I shouldn't put some of that as, for example, "fascists" or "the nobility", or just "upper class scum" think that Their People deserve all the breaks, and the rest of these people are just ignorant peasants?"

    These are pretty much the observations that formulation of the question is meant to provoke. If you keep going along that train of thought, you may get what I was trying to say (apparently badly).

    687:

    it depends on which specific power plants you mean.

    It was a Thing in the mid-to-late 60s to "industrialise" rural China with small, often tiny and impractical factories in people's backyards making steel, producing machinery components and the like. Part of the Great Leap Forward involved building lots of tiny river-run and earth-dam hydroelectric generating plants in suitable and unsuitable locations up in remote mountains, generating tiny (by today's standards) amounts of electricity. Getting that power down from the mountains into the populated plains would require hundreds of kilometres of low-voltage grid to connect each each tiny plant so the power remained stranded and unavailable to anyone who could really use it until recently. Enter Bitcoin where the miner rigs live in sheds next to the hydro plants, ka-ching!

    As for the "renewables" thing in China, sorry. China's current (so to speak) plans are to be producing about 1TW, maybe 1.25TW of its electricity demand from coal in the next couple of decades. They're building out everything that might generate electricity, solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, hamsters in wheels as demand increases -- at the moment they produce a bit more electricity than the US does but it has to cover four times the population. Sure they're increasing the amount of renewables but it's a drop in the bucket compared to coal which will cover about half their expected generating capacity in a decade or so. The new coal plants will be cleaner and more efficient but the CO2 goes straight into the atmosphere which sucks.

    688:

    In my early 20s I liked the term "common nonsense". Unfortunately it generally required too much explanation and I've pretty much dropped it in favour of more specific observations about how the obvious interpretation of things is often wrong.

    689:

    There are a lot of questions comparing the USA to other countries on Quora. The interesting ones are often about Scandanavian countries, though whenever there's a mass shooting in the US, we get a bunch about Australian gun laws (and how they make us less "free").

    690:

    The thing with frameworks is that they embody the best as well as the worst. For instance, web servers are really event handlers that execute callbacks, something that the file and folder model (while useful) obstructs. But when XHR happened suddenly the MVC pattern overwhelemed the web via the dozen frameworks that sprung (see what I did there) up. So end-to-end frameworks are a thing, and not necessarily bad. All software sucks, all hardware sucks and all that.

    691:

    Americans don't realize how much non state actors curtail our freedoms because we watch too many movies. We expect everything to be as obvious and stereotyped as a director has to make them in order to quickly convey information and tell the story. So bad guys look like bad guys and good guys look like good guys. Child molesters are strangers who wear trench coats and fedoras and hunch over suspiciously. Rather than prominent lawyers who spout bible verses. Thus we don't see how oppressive "non state actors" would appear if we simply saw them in more identifiable terms. We would recognize the oppression if the government drove cars around with loudspeakers blaring that everyone must stay indoors or they might get hurt. But if gangsters drive around blasting bass then we all know better than to be out at night because they will be defending their dibs on the public space. Many other private practices are like this. When accidents happen to people who cross those with pull and influence we don't perceive that as the actions of the secret police, but really that's what it is.

    692:

    " these companies have very large farms of machines, which are not completely utilised I assume. If bitcoin mining is more profitable than its electricity cost "

    Mining on general purpose hardware ceased being profitable (more BTC than Watts) some time back. There was a point where you could buy enough Amazon resources for it to be worth while, but that's past too.

    693:

    It's also possible to do this with your right foot heel and toenig both brake and accelerator when you're handbrake is knackered (I drove in a LOT of very bad 70s era BL products in the 90s).

    694:

    Socialism involves sharing, but everything that involves sharing is not socialism. It's just sharing. It's one of those set things like with the diagrams.

    695:

    if gangsters drive around blasting bass then we all know better than to be out at night because they will be defending their dibs on the public space

    Racist stereotypes, much?

    Consider this a yellow card.

    696:

    I've had to turn noscript off, I hat the new interface so much. WTF was wrong with the bloody context menu for god's sake?

    697:

    Sure. No offence intended. Just describing a lot of places I've lived. Where I currently live, to an extent. The reality is, low rent neighborhoods (of any kind) are under assault by locals acting as the agents of hidden outside forces. Thing about poor people is they're happy to do anything to other poor people for a buck. What's insidious about the system.

    698:

    I've had to turn noscript off, I hat the new interface so much. Been using "uBlock Origin" as a stopgap while NoScript is being unbroken. Not sure how good it is though it's blocking a lot of scripts. (My issue was/is stability with a bunch of open windows and a zillion open tabs. Perhaps it is largely Firefox though; the new version uses a lot more memory for me, sometimes silently running the machine out of memory and swap.)

    699:

    There are lots of questions like this on Quora. Usually posted by anonymous trolls or obviously fake IDs.

    Yep. I'm not really sure what Quora is supposed to be, but after clicking on a couple of Google hits for Quora on unrelated things, I started getting frequent Quora spam -- much of it being puff pieces on the awesome combat effectiveness of the F-35 Lardbucket. Most of the clickbait was primitively framed in a kind of Orca vs. Great White Shark "¿Que Es Muy Macho?" absurdity.

    Since nobody was talking about cost-effectiveness, I felt certain that it was an ongoing propaganda campaign.

    700:

    "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

    "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

          --Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

    701:

    if gangsters drive around blasting bass then we all know better than to be out at night because they will be defending their dibs on the public space

    Racist stereotypes, much?

    Sorry, I can't see how it's a racist stereotype because I can't even figure out which race it's supposed to be a stereotype of. My best guess is weak: mentions of "gansters" and "blasting brass" makes me think of Tommy guns in some 1940s-era gangster movie. (Could just as well be 1920s. My history is weak.) The people in those movies were mostly white. But accusing someone of white racist stereotypes is, well, weird.

    It would be clearer to claim sexism. I think we all visualize those gangsters as male, right? I can't tell whether the statement "men tend to be more violent than women" is discriminatory against men or women, though. Men can do more of a thing than women, but it is a bad thing. Still confusing.

    702:

    In the US this translates to dark skinned people driving large SUVs with way overly tinted windows with the sound up so loud[1] you can hear it plainly in your car 30 feet way when BOTH of you have your windows up. At times the vibration can be felt through you seat.

    This started as a gang thing many years ago. Just like sagging.

    Now it's "hip" with the younger crowd.

    It IS a stereotype. But one with a past. Like most of them.

    And it's easy to jump to a stereotype when you can't carry on a conversation in your car due to the sound level in a nearby car.

    [1] This is done via after market sound systems that can run into $1000s. Maybe $10,000s.

    703:

    I had another thought kind of tangent to the "who is more free UK or U.S."

    I read a bit of "true crime" along with my voracious Sci-Fi habit. If you have A LOT OF MONEY you're more likely to get away with murder, or at least get a lesser charge & a lighter sentence. That seems to be as much true in the UK as it is in the U.S. It might be a bit less blatant in the UK, but OTOH, we don't have a titled aristocracy the police have to tippy-toe around.

    In the U.S. the victim's family can sue for damages for "unlawful death" even if you aren't convicted for the crime; the way Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown's families sued OJ Simpson.

    Do they have anything like that in the UK?

    704:

    I've had to turn noscript off, I hat the new interface so much. WTF was wrong with the bloody context menu for god's sake?

    It appears to my amateur eye like the new style is for scripts to be nested, so that when you click to temporarily allow a single script it calls so many additional scripts the list of blocked scripts increases exponentially. The real source of the scripts is buried & hidden so you can't find out what scripts are actually needed to display content.

    Plus, I can no longer right click on a script to find out about it's reputation; whether or not the site hosts malware or not.

    The main benefit I still derive from NoScript is that it does still appear to be effective in minimizing the number of auto-run videos blasting my ears off whenever I follow a URL.

    705:

    This & "Quora" Many ignorant & uninformed but honest USA peeps (* ) on Quora, but also several trolls, who derail conversations or ask deliberately "have-you-stopped-beating-your wife" questions. Navigating those can be "fun" sometimes. But, every so oftern a golden question surfaces ....

    (* ) People who don't realise that there is a whole planet outside the USSA, usually because they have been "sheltered" ( i.e. deliberately misinformed ) from that knowledge.

    706:

    The only case I can think of in the UK was the vile Nicholas Hoogstraten ... And even he pushed his luck & left the country, as the authorities were plainly unhappy with his actions, shall we say? As for "Titled Aristocracy" - that shows just how out of touch you are. Until very recently, the way to get away with some truly vile crimes was to be an MP &/or a "media personality". That seems to be cahnging now, of course, & about time.

    707:

    Primitive religious blackmail gains traction in Britain. ( & not just either part of Ireland, either ) This is disgraceful.

    708:

    It appears to my amateur eye like the new style is for scripts to be nested, so that when you click to temporarily allow a single script it calls so many additional scripts the list of blocked scripts increases exponentially. The real source of the scripts is buried & hidden so you can't find out what scripts are actually needed to display content.

    Ad exchanges.

    What used to happen in the 90s was, when you saw an ad embedded in a web page, it was a banner that linked you to the advertiser's website.

    These days, what you see is an iframe that runs a script. The script looks at your cookies, fingerprints you to see who you are, and throws that data at a back-end server that runs a marketplace for advertisers who are looking for victims who match a given profile and who have bid and offer prices for eyeball share; the "winner" of the auction then gets the right to colonize your browser window.

    But! It doesn't end there. Some of these winners are other ad exchanges, who re-market the right to your eyeballs to other, more specialized clients — the browser profile they're buying is a wildcard/multi-keyword match that corresponds to a bundle of their customers' desires, much like search engine keyword spam poisoning searches for "real estate" or similar over-broad keywords.

    It's incredibly wasteful of computing resources, bandwidth, and energy — the servers those ad exchanges are hosted on don't run on moonbeams and pixie dust — but the end result, if you browse with no ad-blocker/scriptblocker should be that you get highly specific ads tailored to your interests. In theory (according to the market boosters). In practice what you end up with is Russian malware, bitcoin miner scripts, and political propaganda. And that 500 word piece in the New York Times turns into 26Mb of bloated javascript trying to execute on your laptop.

    This is why we can't have nice things.

    709:

    Since we're well into the overflow portion of the comments thread, could an islander please describe to this continental what the new Brexit deal is about? Which group is going to rage about it?

    710:

    That seems to be as much true in the UK as it is in the U.S.

    Rather less so in the UK.

    Murder—at least, first degree murder: intentional killing—is treated differently in the UK; the Police prioritize it over everything and throw huge resources at it. Not sure how it plays since Theresa May cut their budget by 30%, but circa 2008 the average British murder investigation involved 90 officers and cost a couple of million pounds. Having spent copious resources on an investigation they demand results — about 90% of murder investigations result in a conviction eventually (although in some cases it may take decades: cold case reviews every ten years are the norm, up to 50 years after a body is discovered, if they don't get anywhere at first).

    Also (important point) prosecutors in the UK are not elected politicians; they're apolitical civil servants. You can't bribe them to go easy on you by making a donation to their election campaign and they're individually almost completely immune to political pressure.

    Also: the US practice of pre-trial plea bargaining doesn't really happen over here: the Procurator Fiscal's Office (Scotland) and Crown Prosecution Service (England/Wales) generally only bring charges they're willing to take to trial—otherwise they'd have to prepare a bunch of entirely spurious casework that'd risk getting thrown out, and they're on a budget.

    At lower levels yes, having money means you can pay for a better legal team and improve your chances of a "not guilty" verdict or a reduced sentence. But murder? Not terribly likely.

    711:

    Here's a roundup of the headline points.

    I have no idea how this is going to work and some bits—no border between NI and the Irish Republic but UK to leave the Customs Union—are flatly contradictory. But the news about EU and UK residents being allows to remain is a relief.

    This is either laying the groundwork for a huge climb-down that will enrage the hard brexit fanboys, or it's a fig leaf to allow trade negotiations to continue pending a huge climb-down etc etc.

    712:

    I will add: it looks to me like this 'deal' was forced — the alternative was at a minimum the resignation of the Prime Minister and quite possibly a forced snap election (that would give the Tories an excuse to throw the whole mess in Jeremy Corbyn's lap, in the expectation of coming back to power after a single term Labour government when the brexit-voting public punish Labour).

    It's still possible that the whole house of cards will collapse, but at least it's possible for trade talks to start. Meanwhile, May has surrendered on pretty much every single one of her red lines after wasting six months.

    713:

    To be honest i feel for her - she clearly hates Brexit.

    Charitably i see her red lines as public posturing, she never wanted them. but by setting and then retreating she can end up with the half out (as opposed to half in which is where we were before) position on the EU that's the best you can get under Brexit.

    If she just set out where she wanted to be at the end she would be out of power in a day and the Brexit loonies and the mob would reduce our economy to having us scrapping potatoes out of the mud to eat within a month.

    I feel history will treat her kindly on this - cameron on the other hand deserves to be hung in effigy every june for the next 400 years.

    714:

    the Western China Economic Development plan, which is intended to provide more employment opportunies for residents of western China

    According to a conversation I had with a Chinese professor a decade ago, development in the interior is also supposed to provide a place to move populations displaced by rising sea levels.

    715:

    Personal analysis/opinion: It's a fig leaf, and I expect the border issue to rear its head again later in the process (or possibly just after Brexit is a done deal, for values of "done"), but this time with an almost certain defacto "Irish Sea Border".

    The only ones really objecting to the Irish Sea border are the DUP, and they have only one threat to hold over the Tories' heads: withdraw confidence & supply and collapse government. At which point they're almost certain to be dealing with a Labour government under Corbyn. A less than ideal proposition.

    As one commenter on Twitter put it: It's the equivalent of sticking a post-it note here saying "fix it later".

    716:

    She will have seen the xpert reports that tell us what some of us already know - that leaving & worse leaving we=ith no deal will be an utter disister. Publication is probably being dragged out, so that the magnitude of the disaster is more believeable, if postponed. BUT She has to play it out for long enough & the rabid brexiteers have to shout theor mouths off for several more months, before she can pull the rug from under them See also # 713 ...

    REMEMBER Corbyn wants Brexit as do the fascists & communists .... May is considerably less-worse than surrenduring to those other factions, unlikely though that might seem to many.

    717:

    Corbyn wants Brexit as do the fascists & communists ....

    As a communist (anarchist subtype) I'm not sure that's quite right. Most communists of my acquaintance would probably support Brexit after the Revolution, but think EU membership with freedom of movement is better than the the fortified ethnonationalist state Theresa May favours. (They're also highly critical of the EU's deadly policies on refugees but open borders are sadly not on any politician's agenda.) And of course, the fact that the fash and their racist fellow-travellers all voted Leave is an excellent reason to be on the other side, too.

    The Socialist Workers Party briefly supported a Leave vote before the referendum but they're now doing their best to pretend it never happened, as they generally do. And there was another trot faction papering Bloomsbury with calls for "a principled abstention", though I don't think they were ever heard from again.

    718:

    Re: 'EU's deadly policies on refugees ...'

    Say what ...? Not the EU policy so much as individual countries increasingly wanting to pick and choose which EU Policy menu items they will or will not subscribe to. E.g., look at Germany and Poland.

    Not saying that the EU is perfect but as a body it seems considerably more humane and less vile than some member countries.

    https://www.loc.gov/law/help/refugee-law/europeanunion.php

    Excerpt:

    'During 2015, the EU sought to ensure a coordinated European response to the refugee crisis. Various EU agencies provided assistance, financing, training, and experts to the Member States to implement CEAS. The Commission also allocated over €10 billion to address the refugee crisis and assist Member States, particularly those most impacted. To ensure better security of its external borders, the EU proposed the creation of a European Border and Coast Guard with new powers and shared responsibility for the EU borders with Member States. In November 2015, the Commission signed an Action Plan with Turkey designed to reduce the migration flow entering EU through Greece.'

    ...

    I. General Principles of CEAS

    CEAS is based on the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, as amended by the New York Protocol of January 1967 Relating to the Status of Refugees.[11] CEAS affirms the principle of nonrefoulement, enshrined in article 33 of the Geneva Convention, under which states are prohibited from returning refugees or asylum seekers back to countries where they face persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.[12]'

    719:

    Not saying that the EU is perfect but as a body it seems considerably more humane and less vile than some member countries.

    I agree. The problem is that EU policies still aren't very humane. In particular, as you identify in the excerpts you quote, the focus is on how to keep refugees out instead of how best to help them. Human Rights Watch puts the case as well as anyone:

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/23/eu-policies-put-refugees-risk

    Borders kill, as anarchists are known to say.

    720:
    Most communists of my acquaintance would probably support Brexit after the Revolution

    Why? Are you planning on a revolution in only one country? How pessimistic.

    Any revolution worthy of the name should aspire to be at least world wide.

    721:

    Ghost Bird notes: "The problem is that EU policies [regarding refugees] still aren't very humane."

    It's not so simple an issue. There is clearly a huge humanitarian crisis given the vast numbers of refugees from wars, climate change, and other nasties. And I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg; as climate change progresses, the problem is only going to get worse. We unquestionably need to do something to help these people.

    The problem is that European and North American society lacks any sufficiently efficient and effective mechanisms -- political, cultural, economic, technological -- for absorbing so many displaced people. In Canada, for example, we recently welcomed ca. 50K Syrian refugees -- a tiny percentage of the estimated population of millions of Syrians and people from other countries seeking asylum -- and that pretty much saturated our immigration infrastructure. It's an open question how many people we can save in this way both from a purely logistical perspective and from the perspective of helping society adapt to the social changes that result from importing such large numbers of people with different customs. For all that I love my country, and my pride that an estimated 20% of our current population is foreign-born, I don't for a moment believe that nobody here is a racist and that nobody here feels threatened by the new arrivals. We're already starting to see signs of stress.

    So yes, western countries should seek ways to be more humane and welcome more refugees. But the need is to solve the larger problem -- end the wars and climate problems that are driving the crisis -- not simply to scale up our systems for welcoming refugees. This is emphatically not a trivial problem -- but it's the one we really need to solve.

    The logistics of relocating thousands of people is truly forbidding. Divide 50K refugees by the ca. 300 people you can fit on a typical passenger plane to get a sense of the logistical problem. Even with ca. 5K people squashed onto a very large cruise ship, that's still 10 very long round-trip voyages to get these people from Syria to Canada. Then estimate the short-term cost of housing and feeding so many people until you can start finding employement, and the medium- to long-term problems of funding those who can't find a job. (It's not like we have 0% unemployment right now.) Imagine how much worse the problem becomes when we scale up from thousands to millions.

    Please note that suggesting refugees stay home and solve their problems locally isn't primarily about racism; it's about the recognition that most people would be happier not having to leave their homes, that we lack the technology to relocate millions of people, and that we lack the infrastructure and social mechanisms to integrate them with their new homes. We should unquestionably try to improve our efforts; as a 2nd-generation son of Russian and Irish immigrants, I fully get how important immigration is. But the problem needs to be solved at its source.

    How can we do this? No idea. Hopefully smarter people than me can figure it out.

    722:

    That's nothing like the definition of socialism that I've ever heard, unless you're talking about the 1% sharing. The rest of us - it's giving each other a helping hand, so that nobody goes down into the mud.

    723:

    I was wondering what is your view on austerity in a longer term. Maybe I don't understand it correctly, but isn't austerity opposite of running unsustainable budget deficit? Or there are some middle ground possible?

    724:

    I'm just amazed we're not talking about Charlie's windows yet.

    725:

    When I was living in FL, a dozen years ago, for a while this guy would drive along... and the volume on his sound system was so loud that the car itself was rattling.

    Music? What's that?

    726:

    GAHHH!

    Thanks, Charlie, I had no idea about the ad exchanges. Hope it's ok - I want to forward your post to folks, as to why they should run noscript, or something like it.

    727:

    So, let's see the rhyme you've written, to be read while burning a paper doll with the others on 7 Nov.... (My manager is an ex-pat, and has a Guy Fawkes' Day party every year on the Sat nearest....)

    728:

    The real problem is that no one's got any idea how to handle huge numbers of refugees. Internally, the US had a huge problem with the black migration to the north, and when you're talking about hundreds of thousands and internationally....

    Of course most people don't want to leave their homes; at best, they want to stay in the same general area. But to lose everything, and be thrust into a new culture unwillingly (or die)... that's a psychological, as well as humanitarian issue.

    729:

    Not sure who you were asking, but "austerity", as currently promulgated, is "our Masters, the 0.1%, want lower taxes, and we don't want to raise them on the rest of the 1%, so we'll cut all social services, and we don't need public education, anyway, I mean, who can make a decent buck off of poor people?".

    Austerity? Hit the 400 up for 50% of the annual income, and (for the US), that includes capital gains, dividends and interest (which are currently treated Differently... and taxed at a much lower rate than regular income).

    Note that I just recently read that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill the Gates have more wealth than HALF OF THE POPULATION OF THE US http://www.newsweek.com/three-people-own-half-us-while-one-five-has-nothing-716802

    That's austerity in a nutshell.

    730:

    What about the other part? Can victim's families sue for damages?

    731:

    So, let's see the rhyme you've written, to be read while burning a paper doll with the others on 7 Nov.... (My manager is an ex-pat, and has a Guy Fawkes' Day party every year on the Sat nearest....)

    Isn't it a bit late for that? We're already into December. And besides, I thought it was 5 Nov?

    732:

    Whoa now, the British police are not in thrall to the titled classes, that's such an ancient bit of nonsense. The class system regarding titles etc is basically on its last legs, it's much more important nowadays to have money, doesn't matter how you got it. In that respect we are like the USA.

    However even having money doesn't help, the only way of getting away with a murder is to bribe the politicians, not the police. However if you are found guilty having lots of money doesn't mean you get a lighter sentence.

    733:

    What about the other part? Can victim's families sue for damages?

    In theory maybe; in practice, nope.

    Firstly, they wouldn't stand a hope in hell of winning a settlement unless they could demonstrate that the target of the lawsuit had killed the victim. If there's sufficient evidence to demonstrate that, then the CPS/PF would normally bring criminal charges. If there isn't enough evidence to secure a criminal conviction, there probably isn't enough to get a settlement out of a civil case. If the accused is found guilty in a criminal court they're probably going to prison for a life sentence. Likely as not they don't have any recoverable assets, or any recoverable assets belong to their family. If they made a profit out of their crime, the state probably confiscates it (we have civil forfeiture law for the proceeds of crime, but only after a conviction).

    Secondly, contingency/no-win-no-fee isn't really a thing in the UK, at least for open-ended civil suits. (There are some limited areas where they happen, I'm not clear on the details.) So you'd be looking at coughing up somewhere in the range £50-200,000 in legal fees to run such a case, in hope of securing damages that would likely be smaller.

    Finally, we're just a less litigious society overall.

    734:

    if you browse with no ad-blocker/scriptblocker should be that you get highly specific ads tailored to your interests. In theory

    And just make a mistake once and click on the wrong spot. I missed a link and clicked on the edge of a ladies underwear ad. (No pics, just a company name I didn't know.) I then told my wife why my browser windows had ladies underwear ads all around them for the next month or so.

    735:

    I'm just amazed we're not talking about Charlie's windows yet.

    While this horse isn't dead it has certainly be beaten around here. They HAVE been discussed so much that I tend to think about his windows when I'm looking at older houses/buildings or when my wider neighborhood goes off about nothing should ever change.

    (I have single pane windows and no insulation in my exterior stud walls.)

    736:

    What about the other part? Can victim's families sue for damages?

    Charlie replied:In theory maybe; in practice, nope.

    The family of Stephen Lawrence tried to bring a private prosecution for murder against three people they thought had killed their son. It failed because the evidence against the accused just wasn't there, the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to charge the accused for lack of evidence. The police were accused of not doing enough in the case because Stephen was black but the only real witnesses were the gang that had killed him and the police didn't manage to "break" any of them or get reliable forensic evidence before the family stepped in. After that there was no real way to get any sort of a conviction against the likely murderers even after "double jeopardy" was eliminated by statute a decade later.

    737:

    The real problem is that no one's got any idea how to handle huge numbers of refugees.

    And to top it off, at some point aren't we just enabling Syria and Myanmar and such to keep being asshole governments by letting them exist while throwing out the people they don't want.

    738:

    Note that I just recently read that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill the Gates have more wealth than HALF OF THE POPULATION OF THE US

    And at least one of those, and maybe all three, don't want lower taxes.

    739:

    There's a rhetorical question in the US.

    Would you rather be innocent or have a good lawyer?

    If you answer the former you very likely will wind up convicted.

    740:

    David L wondered: "at some point aren't we just enabling Syria and Myanmar and such to keep being asshole governments by letting them exist while throwing out the people they don't want."

    No. You're erring by assuming that these governments care about whether we take in their refugees. If we stop taking in refugees, this won't stop any dysfunctional government from continuing to create them. Won't even slow them down.

    This kind of logical error afflicts most diplomatic endeavors, so I'm not targeting you here. Where you see this most often is in the misguided belief that if you impose sanctions that lead to mass starvation of (say) most of the citizens of North Korea, the starving peasants are going to rise up and overthrow him. That's not going to happen any time soon.

    Imagine instead if you implemented a plan to air-drop kilotons of food packages on said peasants (you do, after all, have air superiority)* and instead exerted heroic efforts (with help from your allies) to cut off imports of preferred luxury goods for Kim and his generals. Then you might see some action... like, say, a coup.

    • Yeah, I know. It's not nearly so simple. If it were, everyone would be doing that.
    741:

    If you make a mistake, browsers do let you chose to, say, clear your cookies for the last hour, or all the way.

    742:

    Oddly enough, Bill the Gates, purveyor of pernicious software, has actually written letters and op-eds that Congress should raise his taxes. So, for that matter, did Gate' father (who was a millionaire when he poppoed $20k for Gates to start a business....)

    743:

    Re: 'sanctions'

    Maybe sanctions against weapons supplies instead? Assuming that most weapons are manufactured in developed countries and that most such manufacturers submit revenue/tax data to their respective gov'ts, then tax them to offset any potential foreign aid their weapons would create based on historic data/trends. Then maybe throw in a public awareness campaign that shows (a) how many of that country's own soldiers are killed per $$$ foreign weapon sales because most developed countries do send their own troops in once the situation gets bad enough and (b) cost of medical care for returning troops (i.e., increase in base tax rates overall), orphaned children, stressed out families, etc.

    Not a historian, but seriously, war's the stupidest, most ineffective, wasteful and uneconomical idea HSS has ever come up with.

    744:

    And ironically that’s part of the problem no matter how bad these states are and how whittle behave the lot of their people overall is still better than that of a totally distabilised country in a civil war which is generally what happens if an external force sticks it’s nose in.

    It would be great if the next AI algorithm they come up with allows us to calculate the minimally disruptive path to regime overthrow. Problem is that the technology would probably work just as well on a peaceful country,

    745:

    browsers do let you chose to, say, clear your cookies for the last hour, or all the way.

    Cookies are so last century.

    Most tracking like Charlie was describing doesn't require cookies. They match you via geo location, screen size, browser version and options, CPU details, etc...

    If you're logged into Facebook and open up another tab and then go to a web site with a Facebook button Facebook will know the web site you are visiting. No cookies involved. Cookies are just a verification of what you are doing and a way to save details to be "sure" you are who they think you are.

    746:

    Until countries stop making calculations 99% based on profits things like Syria, Somolia, and NK, will not go away.

    No mater how bad the sanctions get on the elite many would rather go down with the ship than give up power.

    http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm

    Great read. But maybe not for pacifists.

    747:

    "austerity opposite of running unsustainable budget deficit?"

    Given the fact that national governments generally issue fiat currencies that cost virtually nothing to produce, and is a monopoly issuer of that currency, why should budget deficits be "unsustainable" for such a government?

    748:

    Yeah. This is where comparisons with the latter (western) Roman Empire need to get made, just so we can figure out if there's anything we can learn from history. I'm not saying that migrants are the equivalent of Vandals and Huns, exactly, except that perhaps they are. Because of the paucity of records, we tend to think of the migrating tribes of the Age of Migration as, well, nomads, or crazy Celts/Germans who burned their villages and moved, but always as unified people, nations without states. I'm starting to wonder if that idea is true.

    More recently, there's some thought in the research that with climate cooling a bit, this favored the expansion of northern European-style agriculture (small farming of turnips, barley, and wheat, apparently), and the contraction of Mediterranean style latifundia that produced huge amounts of grain for export. I'm not sure whether this theory stacks well with the evidence, but if it's at all correct, there are parallels with today.

    Thing is, I don't have a good sense of who groups like the Huns were. They seem to have sprung up out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. That leads me to wonder how much they were nomadic nations, and how much they were ad hoc assemblages of people forced off their land, migrating into a Roman Empire that simply couldn't handle that huge an influx of people, even if they tried mass enslavement. Perhaps the research clarifying the issue is out there, but if so, I haven't seen it.

    This is why I'm starting to think that now might be a very good time to revisit the history of the end of the classical period, using archaeology, paleoclimatology, and good old-fashioned multi-linguistic history, to get at records written in Greek and Aramaic, not just Latin. The answers to questions like "how were the Huns" could really inform the present.

    Getting back to now, if refugee numbers become huge enough that some genius can organize them into migratin nations, I suspect the whole nation-state framework is going to get a severe workout, potentially to the point of failure. That might be bad, at least for national citizens like, well, me. We'll see.*

    *And note, I'm married into a family of immigrants, and I'm not trying to write an anti-immigrant screed here. If things go bad faster than I expect, I'll be a climate migrant along with everybody else assaulting the Oregon border. What inspired this is that, without going into details, I've been seeing a lot of what happens when people illegally use things at such huge rates that the land owners and law enforcement are utterly swamped. My current frame for understanding future migration is to multiply such issues by many orders of magnitude, and I'm not sure how accurate that is. I'm trying to figure out how to talk about it and get my head around it, not advocating for violent suppression attempts.

    749:

    Moving back to the original topic, this is a timely article: 1000 people control 40 percent of bitcoins out there

    http://www.businessinsider.com/40-percent-of-bitcoins-are-held-by-just-1000-people-2017-12

    750:

    Regarding the bitcoin power usage, basically what happens with bitcoins is that when the coins a miner produce by mining (+ transaction charges) are worth substantially more than the cost of electricity, that means it is profitable for each individual miner to use more electricity, thus the mining goes up.

    This makes electricity usage very easy to estimate (as the mining payoff is public knowledge); the market forces the actual electricity usage to converge towards the estimate.

    The role of electricity use in the system is solely to prevent a large number of cheaply run "bots" from spamming the system with their own version of the ledger; it does so by make such spam expensive.

    In the long term, of course, someone will (again) hold >50% of the mining power, at which point bitcoin becomes centralized and the electricity is all wasted for absolutely nothing, as a centralized system could have used digital signatures (proof of authority, if you wish) in place of the proof of work.

    It won't be very long until this "proof of work" scheme becomes much less decentralized than, say, a system with several major governments or even major corporations keeping a set number of official ledgers (combined via their consensus).

    751:

    simple fix (for now) everyone.

    Go to your /etc/hosts file, as an administrative user, and add the line: 0.0.0.0 coinhive.com

    Every request by software on your computer, whether you know it's running or not, that tries do download a block and crunch it from coinhive.com. . . will not be able to locate the server, and will be very sad. You might even laugh at it if you see the error come up in your /var/log/resolver.log

    752:

    I ran across a free communist magazine the other day, called, simply "Worker" It was ranting on about how the EU was an evil capitalist rip-off & "we" wanted out ( Nazi-Soviet pact style, though, of course, they didn't say that - what a suprise ) ... Make of that what you will

    753:

    But the need is to solve the larger problem -- end the wars and climate problems that are driving the crisis There's a very old suggestion for solving that one: "Hang all the priests" ... Um, err ..... See also despairing comments linked to the National Secular Society's website, about the complete surrender to religio-fascists in both Pakistan & Bangla Desh. Or, for that matter, the rallying of the christian fundies around Roy Moore in the USSA.

    754:

    Ask my Huguenot ancestors ....

    755:

    and the police didn't manage to "break" any of them or get reliable forensic evidence... Err, no. The local deeply racist cops ( No-one above "Inspector" level ) were in cahoots with said local small-time pink gangsters, who were even more racist. And MetPlod decided that they would rather be publicly labelled "Institutionally Racist" - which they were & are not - just some members of them ... Rather than admit that they had bent coppers who had fucked-over a murder case. Which is why the Steve Lawrence case is still a sore point

    756:

    Not a historian, but seriously, war's the stupidest, most ineffective, wasteful and uneconomical idea HSS has ever come up with. NO That's Religion.

    757:

    This is kind of what I use private tabs for. Many services get either their own browser or at least a private tab, just to prevent information cross-pollination.

    It's not perfect by any means, but I'm not yet willing to put all my internet use through Tor and run everything in its own sandbox.

    On the subject of cookies and Javascript, there is an attribute which the servers can set on the HTTP cookies, namely 'HTTPOnly', which prevents their use from Javascript or other scripting languages. It's often not set, commonly because the framework defaults to it being unset and not that many developers think of setting it. I've had close-out meetings where I've recommended that the 'HTTPOnly' flag is set on only to have to explain what it is and how it's commonly manipulated. To a bunch of 'web developers'. They have usually been quite receptive.

    758:

    Also, the 'HTTPOnly' flag is only a recommendation for browsers, they don't have to obey it. I don't know of any browser which would purposefully disregard it, though, mainly because it would be against the users' wishes.

    By itself it's not a very secure measure, but it's easily done and in most cases doesn't hinder the web pages at all, so usually it should be on. (As should the 'Secure' flag if the site uses HTTPS.)

    759:

    Not a historian, but seriously, war's the stupidest, most ineffective, wasteful and uneconomical idea HSS has ever come up with.

    It isn't a human invention. Conflict between animal groups is omnipresent. For instance this chimp war.

    760:

    Attention: here is The Daily Mash with the last word on Bitcoin: A guide to Bitcoin: The amazing investment based on dream gold invented by a wizard.

    So true.

    761:

    SFreader noted: "Maybe sanctions against weapons supplies instead?"

    Great idea in principle, but in practice, that would interfere with very large corporate profits, so governments look the other way about arms dealers. We need to reconsider the whole "corporations have more rights than people" approach to modern (American) capitalism before this would work. Also:

    SFreader: "Assuming that most weapons are manufactured in developed countries..."

    Historically, when firearms and bombs aren't available, despots resort to machetes, axes, spears, and clubs (e.g., Hutu vs. Tutsi). That makes the warfare less efficient, but no less deadly if allowed to continue long enough. The inherent problem is that 1 extremely violent person can intimidate 10s or 100s or 1000s of "normal" people into submission, and there are plenty of these violent people.

    SFreader: "Not a historian, but seriously, war's the stupidest, most ineffective, wasteful and uneconomical idea HSS has ever come up with."

    I have a lot of sympathy for this notion, and have a vague recollection of reading a credible scholarly argument in favor of it many years ago. Since I can't come up with a citation, treat that as unsupported anecdata. The obvious problem is that we can't really do a double-blind experiment, which would be required to convince the skeptic. G Still, someone ought to try the experiment. Imagine, for example, if the Americans had tried to provide more economic support for Cuba than the Soviets could afford to provide, thereby ending up with a near-shore ally rather than half a century of cold warfare that has impoverished generations of Cubans and made them hate the U.S.

    Heteromeles noted: "This is where comparisons with the latter (western) Roman Empire need to get made, just so we can figure out if there's anything we can learn from history."

    Indeed.

    Heteromeles: "I'm not saying that migrants are the equivalent of Vandals and Huns, exactly, except that perhaps they are."

    The important parallel lies in the consequence (numbers), not the ethnicities. The problem I see with this suggestion is that scared people in the host country will quickly begin beating the Vandal and Hun drum (i.e., "invasion"), not the humanitarian drum. It would be tricky to avoid that. Racists and other scaremongers will quickly go to the bad lessons learned from history, which pander to the same kinds of fears that got Trump elected. The result is social instability that leads to bad things.

    Heteromeles: "I don't have a good sense of who groups like the Huns were."

    This isn't surprising given that they were likely (i) a pre-stone-city culture, therefore leaving no extensive ruins, and (ii) a pre-book culture, therefore leaving no written records. There's undoubtedly much evidence still to be found (even wooden huts leave rooms; even engraved stones leave text), but ruins and books are the low-hanging fruit of archeology. I suspect the Huns and others were (loosely speaking) homogeneous "cultural groups", which is to say peoples with a shared language and shared cultural referrents, whether or not they were "civilizations" by modern standards (monolithic/homogeneous cultures with deep-rooted infrastructure).

    Heteromeles: "if refugee numbers become huge enough that some genius can organize them into migratin nations, I suspect the whole nation-state framework is going to get a severe workout, potentially to the point of failure."

    I think the larger lesson to be drawn is that the traditional solutions (invasion of desperate people --> warfare to keep them out) didn't work out well for anyone, and that we need to think outside the traditional boxes. For example, could we establish vast areas of greenhouses in abandoned urban areas such as parts of Detroit, and settle refugee farmers in abandoned homes hear the greenhouses? Give the farmers immediate employment and housing, increase domestic food security, and avoid immediate fear-inducing competition with established workers (e.g., the remaining auto workers). It would also create employment for non-immigrants. Could we on-shore some of the tens of thousands of jobs that were exported overseas? Not force refugees to work at slave wages by North American standards, but rather start them at minimum wage, possibly supported by government wage subsidies, to give these people a chance for a new life.

    This would be expensive, but there seems to be good historical evidence that within a generation, immigrants become good citizens and taxpayers, more than repaying any "startup costs". An economist could probably quantify the return on investment for us.

    762:

    Given the fact that national governments generally issue fiat currencies that cost virtually nothing to produce, and is a monopoly issuer of that currency, why should budget deficits be "unsustainable" for such a government?

    Inflation and the loss of "full faith and credit" in their currency. The two solutions to prevent inflation are:

    1) taxation to remove currency from the marketplace and people's pockets or

    2) borrowing on world markets to counteract the necessity to print more money.

    The third solution (and the hardest to achieve) is for the economy to grow fast enough to use up the extra cash money circulating as the government prints money to pay for offices, roads, good works, post office workers, soldiers, warships, clean water, paved roads, scientific research, subsidies for industry, orphanages etc. etc. etc.

    Borrowing versus taxation is a balancing act. Growing the economy is the best option but is not as easy to achieve consistently, sad to say. It's why spending your way out of a recession by borrowing and printing money and spending it on public work programs is the way to go, not austerity but cultists believe otherwise.

    763:

    Um, you're looking at the world pre-2000. Right now, weapons are still mostly manufactured in developed nations (if you treat Russia and China as a developed nation). That's mostly due to inertia, politics, and first-mover advantage rather than capability. Companies producing weapons could easily move those factories to the developing world, and even produce shell companies to get around any potential sanctions. Even if that doesn't work, I'm sure there will be plenty of startups willing to manufacture weapons to sell to dictators. Heck, North Korea needs a new source of funds.

    764:

    Weapons manufacture: IIRC, Aum Shinri Kyo decided it was too hard to smuggle in as many automatic rifles as they wanted, so they bought an entire AK-74 manufacturing line from an ex-Soviet general and (tried to) ship that instead. It's not that hard to do any longer.

    765:

    Re "war is stupid", first hit in google scholar was this analytical piece, with some focus on Columbia and Peru. (FWIW I (as a pacifist) had a hard time reading it because the mindset was so different.) Stupid and expensive?: a critique of the costs-of-violence literature (2009) It does end with this high note:
    Most importantly, if attempts to measure the costs of violence and war are placed on a sounder footing they might better be able to contribute to policy interventions that allow all actors, as Fearon’s rationalist puzzle puts it, to deduce post-war outcomes and thus strike bargains without incurring the human costs of war.

    Bitcoin Mania is starting to involve player-level money. Might be some new rich people in the world when it collapses; hope (it is possible) that some of them are good. I've been assuming that there is a bunch of market manipulation happening; not particularly interested enough to look. What happens when bitcoin’s market cap overtakes world GDP? (Access through news.google.com works fwiw )

    More DeepMind (AI) news, not mentioned here yet but it looks significant: Google's 'superhuman' DeepMind AI claims chess crown And the initial paper (not peer reviewed yet): Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm Instead of an alpha-beta search with domain-specific enhancements, AlphaZero uses a general-purpose Monte-Carlo tree search (MCTS) algorithm. (Note that the paper cites a few other recent efforts to get monte carlo tree search to do well in the chess domain.)

    I might have irritated someone. Sorry if so. (Can be hard to read the info tells.)

    766:

    Re: Critique 'War Is Stupid'

    Thanks for posting this! Have only just started reading and looks quite interesting.

    Don't know whether this will be mentioned in the above article, but there is a way of quantifying events such as war in terms of their impact: life expectancy, overall health (diseases), and education. (Actually these plus other outcome measures are used in the World Happiness Index.) These are not trifling 21st century leftie notions; these are aspirations that almost every society has valued through the ages. So why are they increasingly being subordinated to war and money/trade - which are basically one upmanship and brinkmanship in a zero-sum game?

    http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/

    The top-10 happiest countries are: Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland (almost a 4-way tie), Finland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. (Also evidence that even the sun-deprived can thrive.)

    Excerpt:

    'The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007 the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption (see Chapter 7) and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better.'

    BTW, overall happiness is trending up in the UK incl. Scotland.

    767:

    Agreed.

    Keep thinking this was started as a prank but because it made its earliest adopters rich, is now being run out of spite. Against whom - no idea. But it will hurt, causing a run-away effect on all sorts of other dominoes that will in turn collapse. Sorta a gene drive in financials because of interdependencies.

    Interesting bit of news from economictimes dot indiatimes dot com: Coming Soon! Imaginary 'futures'!

    'The largest US cryptocurrency exchange has been struggling to manage record traffic, with an imminent launch of the first bitcoin futures contract further fuelling investor interest.'

    768:

    Sorta agree but only because 'religion' is a subset of/alias for 'dogma' which I personally feel is the core issue.

    769:

    "Inflation and the loss of "full faith and credit" in their currency"

    True, but this is a practical constraint, not a monetary one. The solutions you suggest are fine, but in theory a country could just keep creating more money and living with the inflation.

    Also we live in a time where inflation fears are mostly irrational, especially for developed countries. After 2007 many countries expanded their monetary bases hugely but no significant inflation occurred.

    Increasing the money supply does not by itself create inflation. If the money is saved and not spent the inflation does not occur. It is more spending that can accelerate inflation.

    The government can, as you say, combat inflation by withdrawing money from the private sector with taxation.

    770:

    While this horse isn't dead it has certainly be beaten around here. They HAVE been discussed so much that I tend to think about his windows when I'm looking at older houses/buildings or when my wider neighborhood goes off about nothing should ever change.

    (I have single pane windows and no insulation in my exterior stud walls.)

    I'm dealing with the same problem. My house is about 80 years old and appears to have been amateur built, so studs aren't evenly spaced on any scheme I can figure out. In some places they'll go from 24 inches apart to 16 inches. The next one will be 12 inches followed by 5 inches. Whoever built this house must have just stuck studs in where-ever he felt like it.

    Sub-flooring & wall sheathing are a random mixture of 6 inch, 8 inch and 12 inch planks on a 45° angle to the studs & joists.

    The windows were all built in place sash windows and the mill-work in the correct sizes is no longer available. Custom made modern replacements are extremely expensive, so I'm forced back on fabricating my own mill-work.

    The good things about the house are
    1. It's paid for - I'd be living under a bridge somewhere if I had to pay rent or a mortgage and
    2. I'm barely one block outside the historic preservation district.

    If I lived a block south of here I'd have to submit architectural plans for approval before I could even change so much as a light bulb.

    771:

    Cookies are so last century.

    Most tracking like Charlie was describing doesn't require cookies. They match you via geo location, screen size, browser version and options, CPU details, etc...

    Whenever a web site asks if I'd like to share my location with them I select NO.

    772:

    Or, for that matter, the rallying of the christian fundies around Roy Moore in the USSA.

    Everyone was mad at the Roman Catholic Church for not reining in their child molesting priests, but the problem there wasn't anyway near as bad as it is in some fundamentalist protestant denominations, particularly those who adhere to the "prosperity gospel".

    773:
    “Not a historian, but seriously, war's the stupidest, most ineffective, wasteful and uneconomical idea HSS has ever come up with.”

    NO That's Religion.

    I can't think of a war that doesn't ultimately trace back to religion.

    774:

    Haven't finished the article yet but got to the point where I needed to find out more about the author, i.e., felt he was ignoring some stuff. Anyways, intriguing abstract. Unfortunately, the article itself is pay-walled.

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0032329207312181

    Abstract

    'The effort to build a political economy of war without politics is finding its limits. The question now is what comes next. How to put politics back in? This article compares systematically two non-state armed groups that participate in the Colombian conflict, the main guerrilla (FARC) and the paramilitary. It shows that despite their similar financial bases, they appear to exhibit systematic differences— regarding both their social composition and their internal/external behavior—and claims that the key to understanding them is the set of organizational devices that each group crafts in its process of survival and growth. All this suggests that a main tenet of the early political economy of war, that all non-state armed groups can be understood as being strategically identical, is flawed. It also poses a classificatory challenge.'

    775:

    How Freudian of you: he couldn't think of any problem that couldn't be traced back to sex.

    Expand your horizons ...

    776:

    Note to Moderators: Please delete my previous screwed-up post? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [[done - mod]]

    The solutions you suggest are fine, but in theory a country could just keep creating more money and living with the inflation. Really? But we know what happens when this scenario oocurs: START HERE See also Zimbabwe, of late, or, we came close in the early 1970's, with at one point, between 20%-25% inflation in one year ... One of the two classic cases, one tory (1956) the other labour (1976) where "being in control" as the Brexit-loonies put it, proved disastrous.

    777:

    That's because you don't understand religion. Seriously, religion is a category largely invented by Christians in the Middle Ages. Japan and China didn't even bother to come up with precise synonyms until the 19th Century. There's a particular set of practices that get mixed together to form religion as Christians understand that. These practices don't get grouped together the same way outside Christianity, but because Christians did the whole colonial empires thing, a lot of disparate practices got lumped under "religion," and we're stuck with the meme to this day. This causes all sorts of problems in the way we interpret other cultures, but that's life.

    A simple way to see it is that Taoism accommodates certain martial arts as spiritual practices, mostly because (as with tai chi) you have to relax under threat to perform them correctly, and the only way for non-psychopaths to do this is to both practice a lot and to muck out their subconscious so that they're not freaking out and tensing at the wrong moment. There's no analog for this in Christianity, warrior monks not withstanding. Another issue is Buddhism, which technically is an atheist meditation practice (although, yes, Buddha gets worshiped by more rather more people than those who practice the techniques he taught, but that's also true of Christ), but it gets counted as a religion by people who study things categorized as religion.

    Anyway, neither of these have much to do with warfare. The term that's most useful for warfare is synnecrosis, which is a variety of organismal relationship where all parties are hurt by interacting. These relationships are pretty common, but the key question to understanding them isn't necessarily how to stop the damage, it's who dies or surrenders first, because that turns out to be really important in organisms entering such fights. In that regard, what humans do as warfare isn't much different from ant hives do to each other in territorial disputes, and it's actually much less vicious. To paraphrase the ant expert EO Wilson, if you gave ants nuclear weapons, they'd destroy the world in a week. We're not that bad, or that special.

    778:

    As long as that economy never has to interact with any other economy they can print as much money as they like*; it's the consensual economy (reality) that's problematic. As per the url you posted '... demanded World War I reparations in gold or foreign currency' and where Germany ran into problems. Whoever set the reparations terms set out to deliberately punish/screw over Germany and that malice was returned in spades.

    • Didn't we discuss a 2/multiple-tier monetary system on this blog before? (If yes - when/where?)
    779:

    But the 1920's-German example does not translate to Zimbabwe in very recent years, nor the close shave we had with runaway inflation in the early-mid 1970's does it? Or, another two I've remembered, Argentina a few years back or Venezuela right now for that matter ..... Zimbabwe & Venezuala are boith "naturally rich" counties whose economies have been royally screwed, by different forms of corruption insode their own governments, as far as I can see ... ( yes/no/maybe ?? )

    780:

    Re: War 'reparations' (cont'd)

    http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2023140,00.html

    Why Did World War I Just End? (Oct. 04, 2010)

    'World War I ended over the weekend. Germany made its final reparations-related payment for the Great War on Oct. 3, nearly 92 years after the country's defeat by the Allies.'

    'So much money, in fact, that British economist John Maynard Keynes famously stormed out of the Paris Peace Conference and penned The Economic Consequences of Peace, arguing that reparations would cripple Germany's economy.'

    781:

    Re: Hyperinflation in Venezuela

    Interesting - and brings us back full-circle to Charlie's original post:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/bitcoin-mining-is-popular-in-venezuela-because-of-hyperinflation.html

    'Cash is useless in Venezuela thanks to hyperinflation — so people are turning to bitcoin.

    • To survive Venezuela's hyperinflation, many have taken to mining bitcoin to afford basic necessities, according to the Atlantic
    • It is also made affordable due to the low cost of power in the country's heavily-subsidized electricity market
    • Bitcoin miners can make as much as $500 a month, which is enough to afford things such as baby diapers and insulin from overseas'

    Okay - this has got to get China's drawers in a knot as it's currently the largest economy to officially OK crypto-currency.

    If Venezuela is driving the BitCoin, would not be surprised to read that its comm cables suddenly get cut to further isolate them from the rest of the planet. I'm guessing that most of Venezuela's international connectivity for telecomm/internet relies on WW1-WW2 era underwater cabling. Also, according to some sources, V's internet speed and access is slow by gov't design.

    782:

    But we know what happens when this scenario oocurs: START HERE See also Zimbabwe, of late, or, we came close in the early 1970's, with at one point, between 20%-25% inflation in one year ...

    Well, it seems to me that you've singled out a small piece of what I said and attacked it out of context.

    I think it was reasonably plain from what I did say that, in practice, inflation is a limiting factor in creating too much money. But it isn't a financial limitation on a currency creating government, but a practical one, or perhaps a political one.

    People do get upset when their money loses it's value, but this practical fact obscures the question of just when creating extra money will result in inflation. And that isn't as simple as the fairy tales about what happened in Zimbabwe would have you believe.

    Again, it's not money creation that directly causes inflation. If the extra money is saved and not spent no inflation will ensue in the short run. When and if people decide to stop saving and start spending, which can be years later, then inflation will probably happen. When the money saved is saved by the very rich due to government gifts (quantitative easing for example)this is unlikely to happen because rich folk are already spending about as much as they can spend.

    Zimbabwe was an economic basket case before the money printing and consequent hyperinflation started, due to blindingly stupid decisions on the part of the government. Printing money was an attempt to fix what they had already broken, with predictable results.

    The general cure for inflation without tanking the economy (e,g, the path chosen in the 1980's by, among others, the Thatcher government) is to withdraw money from circulation by increasing taxation. Of course, that too does have to be done intelligently.

    783:

    Up to you, but the sagepub.com link, if you hover over the author, has a link to search google scholar for articles by the author, and google scholar shows a researchgate link to a pdf for that (paywalled) piece. (And quite a few other papers.) I have mixed feelings about paywalled papers. (Fortunately have decent legal access but many curious people have limited access.) (Sci-Hub & tor exist, if you're so inclined. Note that you might want to use firejail or some other containment mechanism (or a combination) for pdf viewing if you're getting pdfs from dubious sources, or even from supposedly non-dubious sources.)

    784:

    Also we live in a time where inflation fears are mostly irrational, especially for developed countries.

    This is because developed countries are TERRIFIED of inflation because it destroys currencies -- try buying something today with Confederate dollars, for one example of a destroyed currency.

    Governments will do anything to prevent inflation happening, borrow, cut spending, raise taxes, whatever. The disease is always worse than the cure.

    Increasing the money supply does not by itself create inflation. If the money is saved and not spent the inflation does not occur. It is more spending that can accelerate inflation.

    Money that's saved is invested and loaned out and spent by others so it enters the economic circulatory system and causes inflation. The days of burying lumps of gold in a field are long gone.

    Britain has an interesting coin, the crown that's not in wide circulation even though it's valid currency. It's worth £5 today (it used to be a lower-denomination coin worth half a pound sterling). Crowns are normally struck as commemorative coins but they don't cost more than their face value, oddly enough, they're still £5 to "purchase". You can use them to pay for things but most places wouldn't accept them -- Post Offices are the high-street exception. What people do with them is to give them as gifts especially to children, hoard them etc. That is counter-inflationary as it removes currency from the economic sphere, just like burying lumps of specie does while the Government as owner of the mint is £5 richer for each crown bought and hoarded.

    Hoarding dollar bills (not saving them in a bank) or burying them in a field is the same form of counter-inflation gambit as taxes. The idea of hoarding though presupposes you or someone else expects to un-hoard those dollar bills sometime later and spend them and hey presto! inflation! Taxes are permanent, just like death.

    785:

    Modern nations aren't terrified of INflation, they are terrified of DEflation.
    Inflation is considered perfectly fine and indeed expected, so long as it is kept at a low enough rate that growing the economy will cover the extra monies needed. The magic number seems to be between 0.5 & 3%. Runaway inflation is obviously bad.

    Deflation on the other hand, they expect people to behave differently with a deflating currency that would cause the economy to shrink, and therefore would make servicing their debts more difficult long term. It transfers wealth from Borrowers back to Savers, and we all know that is a bad idea, right?

    786:

    That's because you don't understand religion.

    I understand it well enough to know religion is the root of all evil, including those religions that worship money & power as their gods.

    787:

    Agreed. The basic (and I think, partially foolish) notion about inflation is that it allows the payment of interest. With the economy growing, it's considered to be worth investing, because you can take on a debt and pay it back with interest, because whatever you invest in will be worth more than the debt, even with interest.

    The problem with deflation is thought to be that if you invest in something, like a business or a home, it will be worth less in the future, so you're going to lose money investing now. Therefore, deflation is the economist's worst nightmare.

    Then again, we don't value the natural world in our economy, a lot of which involves "improving" the natural world. This is seen in the idea of groundwater extracted being worth more than water in an aquifer, ore in commerce being worth more than ore in the ground, land that is owned having rights and being improved, while wilderness is considered to be the land of least worth, and pollution of unowned land (such as the oceans) not harming anyone, because it doesn't affect anyone's rights.

    If you're starting to realize how insane this is, then you're starting to see why some nut-cases think deflation would actually be a very good thing right now. With deflation, there's no reason to cut down a forest, because anything you build with it will lose value. Clear land for a factory? Nope, it's only going to lose money. The best thing to do in a deflationary economy is to get out of the economy and invest in other things, like, say, the biosphere.

    I don't know who's right on this, but it does point out that all the so-persuasive math of economics are based on some fundamental assumptions about humans making value by taking things from the outside and bringing it inside the economy. Any ecologist could tell you there's no difference between the inside and outside, they're all part of one biosphere, and we're having a lot of trouble investing in the biosphere right now. Perhaps part of the problem is inflation?

    788:

    I think you probably do a disservice to the grand majority of people who practice religion and attempt to do no harm. It's more important to note that any sociopathic leader can use anything as a pretext for action. Trump's relationship with the evangelicals is a great example. He's not Christian. Why believe what that what he says has anything to do with actual Christian practice? The same thing goes for that so-called ISIL caliph.

    I personally tend to break with the Taoists who believe that power is the worst addiction and the hardest one to lose once it is acquired. This is akin to the Biblical saying that the love of money is the root of all evil. Both seem to apply to many churches who support Trump, at the very least.

    Now, if you're coming from a place where you had a massively negative experience with some religion, I get it. But it's not useful to project that experience onto everybody who claims religious practice.

    789:

    Religion is a bug in the human wetware and like any bug it can manifest in many ways, sometimes even as a “feature”

    It’s not correct to say that the west invented religion, it seems to be very very deep seated in the human psyche

    People that are good at exploiting religion are essentially neurohackers (just like marketers) and that kind of power usually gets discovered and exploited at some point during a cultures lifespan

    790:

    Re: People in Venezuela mining Bitcoin to buy essentials for living.

    To me this seems like a very temporary thing. The Bitcoin that is generated in Venezuela is important for the people there, just to survive, but after that Bitcoin is spent I suspect that it won't get into circulation there, but just gets into the wallets of bigger Bitcoin players.

    Then, with the whole deflation thing of Bitcoin, it basically just sits there, waiting for the exchange value to get big enough to cash out. So, people mining Bitcoin to buy life essentials seems to me to be just mining a bit removed from the people who really benefit from it. Nobody is (probably, haven't researched this) paying salaries in Bitcoin in Venezuela, at least not in amounts large enough to matter.

    791:

    Heteromeles, there may be problems with the economic framework we currently use but I can't think of a better alternative.

    For example, you say that deflation might be good because we'd stop investing in things. That would include solar cells and electric cars and wind farms? Don't we want people to build those?

    As for cutting down forests, a major cause in the developing world is that people have to eat and stay warm. They're not cutting down trees to benefit their stock portfolio, and they won't stop regardless of the economy.

    How exactly do we "invest in the biosphere" ? You're right that externalities are not properly covered by our current economic thinking, but at least we can talk about it and discuss how we should be costing pollution and resource extraction. Taxation and carbon pricing and pollution fines don't always work, but they do work some of the time and we can point out where they need to be changed to improve. Past alternatives to economic thinking have often been "God will provide" as an excuse to do whatever we want.

    Long term we may be able to move, planet wide, to a new way of thinking about how to organise ourselves within the biosphere and decide what we should or should not do. But right now capitalism is the framework for decision making across virtually the entire planet, and I don't see us being able to change this for the next three decades at least.

    792:

    No A "Crown" used to be worth 25p = 5/- Because "Half-Crowns" - which I well-remember, were 1/8th of a £, ie. 2/-6d.

    See also Mayhem @ 786 - a controlled SMALL amount of inflation is actually good for an economy. The trick with any economy is to keep the money circulating, something a lot of people don't understand. "Savings" in bank accounts are re-loaned out in circulation, for instance...

    Deflation is what ahppened from late 1929 until at leaast about 1933 & we all know both the economic & political effects that had, don't we?

    793:

    There's a "hair shirt" economic theory that says human beings doing anything to the world is bad because it changes things. The difficulty with that concept is that it's attempting to straightjacket "the world as it is now" while time, entropy and a large number of other factors are implementing change anyway.

    Britain's "natural" ground cover, fifty thousand years ago, was a kilometre-thick sheet of ice. Now we have the Highlands, the New Forest, grain fields in Lincolnshire and apple orchards in Herefordshire, three bridges across the river Forth etc. Things change. They're going to change again, with global warming and deforestation and repurposing of land for human needs. Deep Green is hair shirts and people won't support freezing to death in the dark even for a good reason.

    As for inflation vs. deflation, I lived though a period in the UK where inflation ran to 10% per annum and sometimes more. It caused a cycle of worker strikes to get pay rises leading to increased prices in shops, currency devaluations, rising fuel prices, confusion and societal stress. Governments of both sorts couldn't get hold of it and maintain spending on schools, hospitals, the nationalised industries, the military (this was the Cold war period) and so on. It was only after Thatcher's government took the hit by doing unpleasant and unpopular stuff that should have been done a decade before that they were able to smack inflation down to historically low levels. (Cue Greg...)

    Deflation can be bad but it's not as bad for Joe Sixpack as high levels of inflation. The only large nation with systemic deflation I can think of (negative interest rates for savings, frex) is Japan, often pointed to by Western experts as an economic disaster zone. Charlie and I have visited Japan (I've been there several times now) and it doesn't look much like an economic disaster zone to us. I'm going there again next year, Yodobashi Camera here I come!

    794:

    This is akin to the Biblical saying that the love of money is the root of all evil.... Which, as usual with religious texts & dogma, disagrees with other parts of christian belief & practice, where "Pride" was & is held to be the pre-eminent "sin" What is probably worst is one of the forms of "pride" - selfishness: "I matter & everyone else can go & F themseleves" - which both Trump & Putin both have in Spades as far as I can see ....

    And, yes, most religious believers let it all wash over them & it gives them a nice warm feeling inside, etc (ad nauseam) BUT ... it is suprisingly easy to convert or switch those peaceable followers into raving nutters, wasting the landscape, if you press all the right buttons. Or hadn't you noticed that slight problem?

    And, as a matter of observable fact ... all religions are based on some form or combination of both moral &/or physical blackmail.

    795:

    JBS opined: "I understand [religion] well enough to know religion is the root of all evil, including those religions that worship money & power as their gods."

    I think it's important to distinguish between organized religion and *religious belief", as they're two very different things. Add "organized" to your statement and I have considerably more sympathy for that perspective.

    Religious belief originated as a pre-scientific attempt to make sense of the universe and (arguably) as an attempt to create a moral code that would encourage people to work together to increase social resilience and make a life that is "nasty, brutish, and short" less so. It's hard to find fault in that.

    Where the problem arises is when belief becomes organized religion. Such organizations typically take the initial belief structure and turn it into an instrument for power. Any organized group contains both a vast majority who truly believe in the founding principles and who, if left to their own devices, would probably create a better world. But the minority always includes individuals who are more interested in power and control than in the founding principles, and who will abuse those founding principles as much as necessary to gain the power they seek.

    Saying that organized religion is a flawed institution is no different than saying it is a human institution: democracy, sports, capitalism, and any other human institution you care to name is deeply flawed because humans are deeply flawed. That does not invalidate the institution; it only means that we must remain constantly aware of these flaws and willing to publicize them and pressure leaders to work on mitigating the problem.

    796:

    The only large nation with systemic deflation I can think of (negative interest rates for savings, frex) is Japan, often pointed to by Western experts as an economic disaster zone. Charlie and I have visited Japan (I've been there several times now) and it doesn't look much like an economic disaster zone to us.

    Depends how you look at it.

    What Japan looks like to me is a country with an aging, and eventually shrinking, population. Right now, however, it's just aging, which means the average age is rising, so there are more pensioners and fewer people of working age. Fewer workers but just as many mouths to feed means the economy is shrinking, or at least stagnating.

    Japan isn't in outright recession because they've got a very productive work-force. But unless they get to deploy robots on a massive scale within the next generation, they're going to tip into economic contraction as their total population passes the crest of their demographic curve and starts to contract.

    797:

    I think it's important to distinguish between organized religion and *religious belief", as they're two very different things. Add "organized" to your statement and I have considerably more sympathy for that perspective.

    I will grant there is a difference between religion and spirituality. The problem I have with making a distinction between "organized" religion and religious "belief" is there is no distinction. They both give the believer leave to impose their "revealed truths" on others.

    798:

    Thanks, appreciate the info about alternatives!

    I'm leery of accessing papers via other channels. I'm hoping that at some point someone might write a review or thesis that will pull various authors pieces together on this topic.

    799:

    Re: Venezuela & BitCoin

    Personally think this is a socioeconomic trap. The more people that get sucked into this, the harder it will be to get out. Very much like Afghanistan and poppies: combination of a ready grey-tinged global market and a crappy domestic economy.

    When I continued reading about Venezuela's internet comm, noticed its very close ties to Cuba. Not healthy considering the current OO occupant and US embassy personnel medical problems in Havana this year.

    800:

    Re: Japan: Stagnation vs. right-sizing?

    Okay - so how does a shrinking economy look in comparison with over-populating the planet and decimating all planetary resources to support this population? Time for the always-grow-or-die belief to be re-examined if not challenged.

    801:

    ...a difference between religion and spirituality. Oh dear ... And what, precisely is supposed to be meant by "spirituality"? Every time I see or hear that word I ... "Reach for my revolver" as the saying goes, simply because it is usually employed as a load of sickening waffling bullshit, to cover-up the gaping fact that the speaker either hasn't got the faintest idea what they are talking about, or do know what they are talking about, but want to bullshit their audience ... I could easily be wrong of course, but I would still like some definitions.

    802:

    Economic growth with declining population - ought to be possible - that is a possible route to a Culture look-alike, after all.

    803:

    "Now, if you're coming from a place where you had a massively negative experience with some religion" ...

    Not with just "some religion", but with practitioners from several religions. Doesn't even count Daesh & the like who want to kill me on general principles because I'm an infidel. It's been up close & personal.

    I've reached the point where any encounter with religion is likely to be "massively negative". Admittedly, protestant christians have been the worst.

    804:

    Re: 'Greatest sin'

    Think that the ancient Greeks said that the worst sin was 'hubris' which basically means excess of any sort. Zoroastrians felt the greatest sin was ducking personal responsibility and/or deliberately avoiding 'wisdom' (learning about the world).

    As mentioned some time ago, I was raised RC and had nuns and lay teachers in elementary and secondary. Plus there were a bunch of courses in undergrad where the profs were Jesuits. Anyways, so lots of interaction with organized religion. Including in senior year in high school when we did a recently organized comparative religions course instead of even more by now boring stuff about the RC. This course was intended as a survey course of the six major religions in the world. Apart from these religions being part of our shared historical reality and the foundations of moral philosophy, learning about and discussing these religions provided at least a smidge of understanding and appreciation of other cultures. Not many schools offered this course, but I'm still glad ours did. I self-identify as an atheist, but as with other aspects of my life, pretty sure that my early upbringing still shows up in the adult that I am now. (Guessing that my experience was more benign than yours.)

    805:

    I also "could easily be wrong"... but.

    For me "spirituality" is the belief that something beyond the the measure of our 5 senses may exist; that we are more than just a body eating, defecating and reproducing for a nominal "three score and ten".

    At the same time, I don't know.

    I can't prove it. I'm open to anyone who thinks they can provide proof, but I want to evaluate that proof for myself to verify it's not another con job.

    Religion, OTOH, deals in "revealed truths". You have to take the priest, guru or leader at their word. You're not allowed to question, you just have to accept on faith that they're not lying to you. All religion is ultimately an argument from authority.

    806:

    Actually, so far Japan has managed to handle the shrinking population just fine.

    1995 125,570,246 +1.6% 2000 126,925,843 +1.1% 2005 127,767,994 +0.7% 2010 128,057,352 +0.2% 2015 127,094,745 −0.8% 2017 126,672,000 −0.3%

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Japan

    My prediction is that they'll hit 1995 numbers by 2020.

    Despite all of that, Japan seems to have beaten deflation (at least for now). Its stock market is the highest it's been this century (highest since the 1990s). Its female labor force participation rate is higher than the US, which peaked in 2000 and has since declined somewhat.

    https://www.brookings.edu/research/lessons-from-the-rise-of-womens-labor-force-participation-in-japan/

    The population is aging. 26.3 percent of Japan's population is over 65. In comparison, 22.4 percent of Italy's population is over 65.

    I do agree that it has problems with part-time hiring. However, I think the uptick in tourism should help increase consumption

    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/01/10/national/number-foreign-visitors-japan-tops-20-million-mark-first-time/#.Wi1n_Xm1v4Y

    Here are some other articles from my browser history that might help.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-19/abenomics-trickles-down-to-smaller-japanese-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-25/japan-goes-with-another-round-of-abenomics https://japantoday.com/category/business/japan's-2016-land-prices-up-led-by-big-gains-in-cities http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-rebound-is-just-getting-started-2017-11 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42154516

    807:

    The problem with a shrinking population is that it's also an aging population. So you have fewer workers and more dependents.

    Housing ... should in theory get cheaper (supply of homes outstrips demand; elderlies trying to sell their assets and downsize). However so much credit is leveraged against real estate that it damages the banking system. Low interest rates, low returns on investment, risk of deflation. Also, housing doesn't necessarily get cheaper/more readily available; you can end up with a lot of deserted and derelict properties instead.

    Employment sectors: you need more carers. But the caring professions are subject to Baumol's disease — it's really hard to increase productivity, be they a doctor or a hairdresser, but wage expectations rise in line with other, more productive, sectors.

    So you end up with a disproportionate amount of labour going into overly expensive, under-producing areas, and competing with the manufacturing/primary producer sector for labour. Which is how you end up with highly robotized production lines manufacturing cars that have to be exported because domestic demand is soft, and with robot exoskeletons to allow 80 year old rice farmers to continue working in the fields.

    Demand for products is very soft because with demographically-driven deflation there's a strong incentive to keep your money in cash under the mattress. Also it's hard to set up a new business because the ratio of the size of your loan to your turnover keeps rising steadily.

    If you can import young, healthy immigrants (and assimilate them culturally enough not to inflame the bigots among your established population) you can rebalance your demographics temporarily; but immigrant families from high birthrate countries converge with the local lower birthrate within a generation of arrival (based on evidence from France, Germany, etc. and middle eastern or Turkish immigrant populations).

    What we can do is shift the focus of growth to virtual products. Not bitcoin, but soft goods that don't consume huge amounts of natural resources. (Think media products and education.) Another option is a universal basic income: if you take money out of an economy via taxes to put a brake on inflation, you can stimulate the economy by putting money into folks' pockets so they can spend it.

    808:

    "Savings" in bank accounts are re-loaned out in circulation, for instance...

    Er,no.

    Banks don't loan out reserves, as has been admitted by among others, the central banks of England and Germany. Banks create new money by bookkeeping entries when they grant a loan. No saver's accounts are debited.

    809:

    Yes, Japan is doing really well, all things considered. However, per The Economist they could be doing much better: if they were at zero population growth rather than seeing a net decline in their work force, they'd have been averaging 4-5% annual economic growth during the period you're looking at, much as they did during the 1980s.

    810:

    Money that's saved is invested and loaned out and spent by others

    Nope. The problem we have right now is precisely that this is not happening.

    Banks do not loan out savings or reserves. They create money out of "nothing" with bookkeeping entries when they loan. They do not need, and indeed they cannot use, any reserves to make a loan.

    Also, almost all central banks for the last ten years or so have desperately been trying to create inflation. They have been doing that with ineffective policy tools imposed upon them by governments and superstitions about money and how it works, but they all wanted about 2% inflation and failed to achieve that.

    811:

    For healthcare: you say unproductive like it's a bad thing.

    I don't know about the UK, but didn't we have a problem in the US with the productive parts of the economy shedding tons of jobs over the past decade partly due to automation? That was why jobs shifted away from highly productive roles to less productive roles such as restaurant workers and Uber drivers.

    Japan's healthcare is not entirely private as in the US. However, there are plenty of private sector companies willing to provide ancillary products and services not covered by the main healthcare system. Furthermore, an aging population is one which draws down its savings accounts to pay for the healthcare industry. Doesn't this increase consumption?

    You're also assuming that healthcare remains unproductive? Retail has become more productive in the US, going from 12% of the labor force in the late 80s to 10.8 percent now. Why shouldn't the healthcare industry not follow suit?

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-08/the-retail-job-apocalypse-has-been-postponed

    812:

    Not sure I agree. This is going by my experience in 2012 to 2015 (admittedly limited to Tokyo). Although their industrial sector is VERY efficient, its service sector has much to be desired in terms of efficiency. For instance, banks had far more people working in their branches than in the US about that time, and far more branches existed. Internet shopping was far smaller then compared to the US at that time. Likewise, malls had far more people working there than you would see at a mall in the US. In my opinion, the declining workforce has permitted the country to make its service sector much more efficient.

    813:

    Also in terms of practicality, I'm not sure Japanese society would have permitted such a high female labor force participation rate if the workforce wasn't shrinking. It's no secret that the overall society is deeply conservative. I wonder what other reforms a shrinking labor force would permit?

    814:

    I don't mean to spam, but another thing to consider. Most of the declines in labor force in Japan are in Hokkaido outside of Sapporo, rural areas, and small-town Tohoku. I think that this has avoided in a lot of ways the N. England problem which has been plaguing the UK.

    815:

    While you're looking at war and peace, I recall that Heteromeles linked to the book length version of this, in the past; here's the shorter paper. Worth a read for the non-violence perspective, and if you're interested, follow the refs (and cites, via google scholar or whatever): Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2008, Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth) The historical record indicates that nonviolent campaigns have been more successful than armed campaigns in achieving ultimate goals in political struggles, even when used against similar opponents and in the face of repression. Nonviolent campaigns are more likely to win legitimacy, attract widespread domestic and international support, neutralize the opponent's security forces, and compel loyalty shifts among erstwhile opponent supporters than are armed campaigns, which enjoin the active support of a relatively small number of people, offer the opponent a justification for violent counterattacks, and are less likely to prompt loyalty shifts and defections. An original, aggregate data set of all known major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 is used to test these claims. ... ... The conflation of nonviolent struggle with principled nonviolence, pacifism, passivity, weakness, or isolated street protests has contributed to misconceptions about this phenomenon. Although nonviolent resistors eschew the threat or use of violence, the “peaceful” designation often given to nonviolent movements belies the often highly disruptive nature of organized nonviolent resistance.

    816:

    One thing to keep in mind about Japan is that for many many years the big industrial players have been reliant on effectively family businesses for supplying essential widgets for their manufacturing and keeping their own costs down.

    A family I lived with near Nagoya had a relatively good deal with Toyota for example, basically making tiny injection moulded plastic widgets for very small car components. Things like the single use plastic plugs to stick a dashboard on with. Their small factory employed about eight people, and solely sold to Toyota. They were well off, others they knew were struggling - the big players aren't afraid to screw their suppliers so they work at less-than-minimum wage, often with quiet asides like "I saw Hiroshi in the onsen the other day, his business looks productive" and boom you suddenly need to gain 5% more efficiency lest he actually switch.

    Those little factories are effectively off the books, often with the extended family helping out at crunch times for free.

    817:

    Thanks. I did know that family businesses also provide components for the I-phone. I didn't realize that such social controls existed on family businesses though. I could see many of these businesses being automated and brought in-house as the family retires. Alternately, the companies could just buy the business and outsource it to another country? I've heard that industrial companies have been doing that with businesses whose owners retire: buy it and then send it to Thailand, or (less-likely) South Korea.

    818:

    Re: Japan, shrinking demos (equals) shrinking economy, etc.

    Not entirely disagreeing or agreeing with your argument per se but do feel that what constitutes 'economic health' needs a closer look. Or, that may have been a good explanation historically, but not so sure it's the best explanation for where we're heading and what we have to do.

    Why does 'more earnings equals health' - not 'more' health, but 'health' as an absolute? That's the US model and we know that the US is still making more money than any other economy. At the same time, evidence is piling up that more and more USians are having a tough time making ends meet, and that their industries are losing on the productivity front. Because of this, I'd like someone to pull this dogma apart and actually test it against reality; reality as in the entire economy (population), as well as by pop'n/demos and sectors.

    http://statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-projected-gdp.php

    2017c US projected pop'n growth rate is about 0.75% vs. China's 0.50%. China's economy is projected to grow approx. 7% vs. US 2.2%. - So population ain't all in our two largest markets which combined impact almost all of the planet via spill-over (trade) effect. Ethiopia is projected to have the fastest GDP growth at about 8.3% in 2017; it also has one of the highest pop'n growths at 2.8%. Now let's look at a familiar western European and much smaller culture: Iceland's GDP grew about 7.2% in 2016 and slowed to about 5% in 2017. Its population grew all of 1.8% in 2014, and has since eased off to just over 1.0%. Finally: the vast majority of countries' populations are growing at less than 3% which if everyone is banking on pop'n growth as the sole or most important way to grow and sustain their economy, they're looking at subsistence.

    Employment/jobs is also a traditional way of evaluating a country's economic health. But like pop'n growth and GDP, its nature/definition and purpose should be re-examined as well. Jobs are a way of engaging individuals into a community (or common cause), provide personal identity and purpose, plus are a convenient method for passing along access to a variety of inter-personal/-business/-gov't transactions (earnings). Looking at some headlines, jobs have become a way of rewarding or punishing people: if you can't get a job doing what X outfit wants you to do today, you're a loser! That's both nuts and toxic since 'jobs' are changing faster than ever.

    819:

    I disagree that the following is a bad thing:

    "their industries are losing on the productivity front."

    This is a good thing. As I wrote above, the productive industries have been shedding jobs due to automation, i.e. they're getting more productive. As a result, workers are moving into less productive industries that were less emphasized before. That brings the overall productivity down. I included restaurants and Uber drivers in this category. Don't worry, productivity will increase again when self-driving cars enter the market. That is, before decreasing again as Uber drivers find another even less productive industry to supply them with jobs.

    As you said, what constitutes economic health needs a closer look.

    820:

    Banks lend more than they've got in reserve from savings, but they're limited by law and regulation to lending up to a multiple of that reserve. Bad Things happened when they lent based on imaginative and esoteric valuations of holdings such as mortgages, the rules were tightened again after the dust settled down.

    Money in savings is dormant in the economic sphere but money buried in the back yard, money burned in house fires and money paid in taxes is taken completely out of the economic sphere. Savings are intended to return to circulation some day, in the other cases the IOUs are lost forever but the government which issued those IOUs received wealth in return for them and that wealth is not lost when the IOUs go up in smoke.

    821:

    That is certainly possible - a hell of a lot of business in Asia is done on the basis of personal contacts, so if the father dies, or if the CEO retires, a bunch of changes can happen fairly rapidly. I don't think the Japanese would want to completely outsource it overseas though - despite the lower costs, there is also a significant trust issue. More likely they'd tighten the screws some more on the little shops - playing them off against each other as a monopsony is frighteningly effective.

    822:

    "However, per The Economist they could be doing much better: if they were at zero population growth rather than seeing a net decline in their work force, they'd have been averaging 4-5% annual economic growth ..."

    "Economy not growing as fast as it could have" is a far cry from "grim meat hook dystopia". As a potential vision of what a post-population-peak society might look like, 2017 Japan beats a lot of the alternatives.

    823:

    Re: Reserves

    AKA money multipliers ... recall reading a few years back that the central bank in the US eased up on reserve requirements. Unfortunately can't find article showing pre and post sliding fraction values.

    Fiddling with the reserves is a legit, magic-wand way of kick-starting a sluggish economy. No idea whether anyone's measured/compared financial contribution to GDP vs. other sectors since the last easing in the US. (That is, unadjusted pre-easing overall US economic performance could be way lower/worse than advertised.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#Money_multiplier

    'Restated, increases in central bank money may not result in commercial bank money because the money is not required to be lent out – it may instead result in a growth of unlent reserves (excess reserves). This situation is referred to as "pushing on a string": withdrawal of central bank money compels commercial banks to curtail lending (one can pull money via this mechanism), but input of central bank money does not compel commercial banks to lend (one cannot push via this mechanism).

    This described growth in excess reserves has indeed occurred in the Financial crisis of 2007–2010, US bank excess reserves growing over 500-fold, from under $2 billion in August 2008 to over $1,000 billion in November 2009.[21][22]'

    So the banks were given leeway to get money moving into the economy but instead sat on their ass(ets) and lots of folk suffered. Wonder what percent of their reserves ended up in the futures markets apart from playing the Eurodollar which don't have all those finicky reporting/disclosure requirements.

    824:

    So the banks were given leeway to get money moving into the economy but instead sat on their ass(ets) and lots of folk suffered.

    One problem is that the borrowers weren't actually borrowing the money on offer to them at historically-low rates of interest (aka "free money!"), in part because the people they would be selling their veeblefetzers to weren't buying so there was no need to invest in new veeblefetzer-making machines, new factories, new trucks for logistics etc. The customers weren't buying veeblefetzers because they had lost their jobs and homes in the crash and didn't have any money to buy new stuff. Vicious circle much?

    The government could step in, announce big infrastructure projects to fix broken shit, expand public works etc., hire people and prime the pump but Austerity! and Debt Reduction! which noticeably extended this latest Depression. Oddly it's a place where tax cuts might have helped, inflating the currency and retiring existing debt but only if the government ran the printing presses as well which they were terrified of doing because Inflation!

    825:

    Signs in to upvote Nojay #825

    826:

    As an aside, that pattern goes back to at least WWII. One reason the fire bombing raids on Tokyo and other cities were so deadly was because there was a lot of production in the houses immediately around the big plants. The Americans realized this, realized that they couldn't really separate the factories from the homes (since production was in the homes too), and worried less about where their bombs fell. That, combined with wooden homes packed tightly together and insufficient fire protection, led to far more Japanese dying in the fire bombing raids than in the atomic bombs.

    Probably if we dig, we'll find out that home manufacturing popped up/continued with the Meiji Restoration, following a pattern set during the Shogunate, or something.

    827:

    Whenever a web site asks if I'd like to share my location with them I select NO.

    Not how it works. The big tracking guys have data bases of IP addresses that will get you down to a block at times. But even if it doesn't they match your browsing history, and other attributes of your system and can typically figure out "who" you are. Or at least which profile in their data base you belong to.

    So you block it. Someone else in your house and/or building says yes and they can tell by your LAN/WAN IP assignment where you are. Using a VPN with a far away or random exit point is the only way around this. But then again how do you think those "Lifetime for $9.99" VPNs make money? They sell you browsing details to the marking firms.

    828:

    Getting very local in this comment.

    I'm barely one block outside the historic preservation district. ... If I lived a block south of here I'd have to submit architectural plans for approval before I could even change so much as a light bulb.

    I think my daughter may be living near you. She just bought a flip a block or so from Ligon.

    But I really doubt it. You can change the bulb. But only if you color match it first.

    829:

    My house is about 80 years old and appears to have been amateur built, so studs aren't evenly spaced on any scheme I can figure out. In some places they'll go from 24 inches apart to 16 inches. The next one will be 12 inches followed by 5 inches. Whoever built this house must have just stuck studs in where-ever he felt like it. Sub-flooring & wall sheathing are a random mixture of 6 inch, 8 inch and 12 inch planks on a 45° angle to the studs & joists.

    Based on your comment your house then appears to have been built in the later 30s or early 40s. In that time period they got built with whatever lumber sizes were available. (Depression then war rationing.) Maybe what was left over from the previous house on the site plus used bought from other locations. As to the joist and stud spacing, while it appears random in many cases back then it was based on a experienced estimate of what areas needed the most structure. And a bit of bounce in the flooring was normal. :)

    830:

    As is often the case, SMBC has an amusing take on Baumol's disease.

    831:

    Based on your comment your house then appears to have been built in the later 30s or early 40s. In that time period they got built with whatever lumber sizes were available. (Depression then war rationing.) Maybe what was left over from the previous house on the site plus used bought from other locations. As to the joist and stud spacing, while it appears random in many cases back then it was based on a experienced estimate of what areas needed the most structure. And a bit of bounce in the flooring was normal. :)

    I had to reshingle the roof a few years back. Because it had already been done twice, I had to strip it down to bare wood before I could put on the new shingles. I found where the guy who built the house signed his name and a date in 1936. There was no previous house on the site.

    I think the guy who built this house (and the one next door) got some kind of pamphlet from the government on how to build a house and built them. These two houses are substantially smaller than the other houses on the block. I found parts of the pamphlets inside a wall while I was redoing the kitchen. There may have been some method to his madness, but I don't think it was based on "experienced estimate", but there's no bounce in the floors at all.

    832:

    Not sure how much austerity is a morbid fear of inflation or just that elites despise "Little people". It may be more the second, because why else would a casino owner prefer a tax cut to putting more money in the hands of potential customers?

    833:

    Banks lend more than they've got in reserve from savings, but they're limited by law and regulation to lending up to a multiple of that reserve

    Not in practice, and not at all for everyone. There is, for example, no reserve requirement in Canada, where I happen to live.

    Where there are, this is only a theoretical formality since the central bank will always lend reserves to a bank at a considerably lower interest rate than they will get from the loan, as will other banks. (Ever hear of LIBOR?)

    In actual practice a bank will loan to anyone they think will be able to repay (with a fudge factor for expected losses due to bad loans) and worry about getting "reserves" later.

    Reserves themselves, where they are required, are of course never loaned.

    834:

    I think you're absolutely right (about this being an attempt to subvert state currency) - and we've seen this model happen in recent history - in Cyprus, and, I think, in Greece. BTC spiked in those two cases, immediately prior to their economic collapse; ensuing chaos, riots, and near fascist takeovers.

    I don't know if banning it is the answer, and in any case, in the USA, the current government isn't going to do it. They'll refuse to even discuss it, and vilify anyone who tries to.

    835:

    They'll refuse to even discuss it, and vilify anyone who tries to. Which should tell us something, but what? 1] They are in favour of BTC (entirely possible ) & want to encourage it by leaving it alone. 2] They aren't actually interested, mainly because they are too thick to understand it. 3] As professional wreckers, they're in favour of it, because it fucks-over the existing system as it grows - furthermore if/when the bubble bursts, it will cause even more chaos & confusion - which is what they want. 4] They know it's a bubble & are "planning" ( you should excuse the word ) to profit, probably politically, when the crash comes. 5] What have I missed - I'm sure that's not a complete list?

    836:

    It's the Stross effect...

    https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21732155-cheap-electricity-and-frozen-winters-cool-massive-computer-servers-why-siberia-great-place

    Dmitry Tolmachev, an Irkutsk furniture magnate, developed a prototype modular home warmed by the servers’ excess heat. The homes cost $8,500 and up, and generate about $850 per month in mining profit.

    837:

    I don't know about the UK, but didn't we have a problem in the US with the productive parts of the economy shedding tons of jobs over the past decade partly due to automation?

    Yes, but.

    Firstly, the lead-time in training health workers is terrible; it takes about 10-12 years after secondary/high school graduation to produce a consultant or general practitioner. Five years to make a nurse. These are all graduate-entry professions these days. There are low/un-skilled niches, but there's a limit to how many cleaners and bed-pan changers we need and, more to the point, former factory workers or lawyers or retail managers aren't necessarily suited to those jobs.

    (We had this problem big-time in the UK after 1980, when Thatcher axed the steel and coal industries. Her people thought the redundant million workers could just get on their bikes and find work elsewhere. Turns out that a 20 year steel worker descended from three generations of steel workers has no training relevant to any other occupation, and most of them can't be retrained; nor do they have the resources (and willingness to sever generational family ties) to move to a city and start over from scratch. Result: entire communities with sky-high unemployment and deterioration for decades.)

    Secondly: most of the tasks involved in general medicine and even speciality work are hands-on and linear, because that's how human bodies work (or get sick, or heal). GP visit durations have been constant for nearly a century, because they involve social interaction with a human patient. We can improve the diagnostic tools the medics have, and we can improve survival rates for the treatments they deliver, but we can't wave a magic wand and cut the face time with patients to zero, or the healing time of broken bones. Attempts to reduce face-to-face time like NHS Direct only work a little bit—they're mostly glorified triage, which has been practiced since the 1860s.

    Also ... at least in the USA, there's huge feather-bedding in the shape of excessive medical and insurance sector administration. If they had a sane single-payer system, about 80% of those jobs would evaporate, adding to the problem. And it's going to happen sooner or later, barring a total collapse (which I wouldn't rule out). Or even after the collapse of the current system.

    838:

    "Economy not growing as fast as it could have" is a far cry from "grim meat hook dystopia".

    But the birth rate isn't high enough to sustain the current worker/pensioner ratio. The work force is aging out of employment, which means the retirement rate is going to creep up gradually. There's a lot of inertia in this sort of demographic trend: you can't reverse it by exhorting 50-year-olds to make babies, for one thing, and for another, couples set their family size by looking at their neighbours: if you have 50% more babies than the national average the result is very different when the national average is 1.5 per woman and when it's 6.0 (Iran in the early 1980s).

    Upshot: they're at all-time peak population right now and projected to drop from roughly 110M of working age now to 60M of working age in just 40 years, while the overall number of over-65s remains roughly static.

    839:

    Vicious circle much?

    Feedback loops are a bitch. And if our Beloved Leaders had fucking studied biology at school, never mind university — instead of taking PPE — they might have acquired a clue. Alas, they're more interested in making the Oxford Debating Society and learning 19th century economic theories based on generalizations of Newtonian physics (with a side-order of European history), rather than understanding homeostatic systems and how the world really works.

    840:

    First, can you separate out the face-time aspect of medicine from the diagnostic part of it? I know that so far attempts to just have the GP being the person who interacts with the patient just collecting data points and the diagnosis being done by a machine have failed. However, if you CAN crack that code, then the person who interacts with the patient is just a above-minimum wage worker (the equivalent of a Starbucks barista).

    Also, the US is not above the following order for the poor: interact with a robot or you get no healthcare. Heck, they're already starting to do this in rural areas in the form of hospital closures. Right now, the robots have not been deployed. However, I've seen talk of modifying Alexa to act as a sort of GP in rural communities where there are no hospitals. If it works there, it can be expanded elsewhere? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rural-hospitals-closure-georgia_us_59c02bf4e4b087fdf5075e38

    Second, retail work in the 1980s was also hands-on and linear. Likewise, in the 1980s, it was considered unlikely that you could reduce face-time in the retail sector to zero. That didn't stop the rise in productivity we've seen. Right now, the same belief holds for restaurant workers. Time will tell if it remains true?

    Third, I would argue that either a small majority or a large minority DID get on their bikes and move away. Reagan did the same thing in the Rust Belt/Apppalachia. Here's what happened: A lot of people migrated to the South. Most metro areas with a population of 250k or less do have sky-high unemployment. However, the steelworkers in larger Metropolitan areas became McDonalds or Walmart workers (workers going from a high productive industry to a low productive one). In a lot of ways, both Reagan and Thatcher could claim that their program was a success in that the majority of steelworkers found new work, even if it was just McDonalds.

    841:

    There are still all sorts of hedges that they can use to get them through the next few decades.

    First, an increase in tourism would pick up consumption. This DOES have the problem of upsetting the bigots though. However, for now the government is willing to try it.

    Second, their economy can remain static (or grow slowly) if they use the retirement ratios to improve inefficiencies in the service sector.

    Third, they'll probably raise the age of retirement, either explicitly or implicitly. According to the NYT:

    "More than half of Japanese men over the age of 65 do some kind of paid work, according to government surveys, compared with a third of American men and as little as 10 percent in parts of Europe."

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/business/japan-older-workers-retired-pilot.html

    Fourth, they'll rely on the same technologies the US is using to improve the productivity of their healthcare sector.

    I agree that eventually the overall economy will shrink due to a lack of population. However, that is at least a decade away (probably two)?

    842:

    To clarify/expand that answer somewhat (referring to Scotland only here):

    As a matter of law you can sue for damages for "loss of society" for a family member being killed, but generally this is only against businesses which are responsible for the death, for a number of reasons:

    The fact that COPFS (Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service) have not obtained a conviction for murder/culpable homicide against an individual does not mean that you cannot prove liability on the lesser civil standard of "balance of probability", BUT considering the amount of resources they throw at such cases unless they got at least an assault conviction OR some fundamental new evidence emerged after the trial that's not the way to bet.

    Which means if you want Legal Aid to run the case, that's not going to happen, without said assault conviction/new evidence. And a privately funded case, budget £40-60k for your own expenses; plus if you lose, a similar amount for the other sides expenses. They will of course be able to get Legal Aid if financially eligible, because they are defending, they have no real choice to be involved in the court action, and the Scottish Legal Aid Board will insist on seeking expenses against you if you lose (can't cause expense to the public purse you know).

    From which we come to the next point: does the other person have in the region of £200k to make it worth while suing? Because otherwise, you win, they go bankrupt, and you get nothing while still being out of pocket for your expenses.

    Plus if your family member was killed, and it was obviously unlawful but there is no conclusive evidence by whom, you can put in a claim to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, who pay out purely on the basis of the unlawful death, with minimal expenditure by you.

    So, if you search on the Court of Session case reports for "loss of society" you will find plenty of cases, but almost exclusively against businesses, and generally on the (easier to prove) failure to comply with health and safety grounds rather than for allegations of deliberate killing.

    As to being a less litigious society (than USA), that is most likely because no win/no fee or contingency fees are almost unknown here, and court expenses are always an issue.

    843:

    Re: '... no reserve requirement in Canada,'

    Only as of 1995.

    http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bank-of-canada/

    'Before 1995, the Bank required each chartered bank to maintain minimum cash reserves (computed as a percentage of its deposits) in the form of notes or deposits with the Bank of Canada. Each bank was also required to maintain secondary reserves in the form of excess cash reserves, treasury bills and day-to-day loans to investment dealers. The Bank never changed these reserve ratios to affect monetary policy and the requirement was phased out in 1994.'

    FYI - Canada has no banks on the global 'too big to fail' list, i.e., the global financial community's list of banks that must be propped up no matter how badly they screw up or screw anyone else over. Also, none of the Canadian charter banks needed to be bailed out during the 2008 global financial meltdown. Might be one of the reasons why a Canuck now heads up the Bank of England.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney

    844:

    That's the second time someone's said we don't have no-win-no-fee here. Is "here", then, specifically Scotland? Because I've seen a shedload of adverts for no-win-no-fee solicitors in England over the years.

    Thing is, of course, there should not even be any "fees", and it should all be done via "legal aid". If access to the law is proportional to how rich you are, the idea that everyone is equal before the law is fucked six ways from Sunday.

    AFAIK a significant reason for the UK being less litigious than the US is that it's the courts rather than the plaintiff who decide how much the "damages" are - or something along those lines, anyway, the point being that it has the result that winning the case is not like winning the lottery. Also our judges seem to be a bit more likely to throw the case out for obviously taking the piss, although that isn't to say that we don't still get plenty of WTF cases.

    845:

    Oh, forgot a few things Japan could continue to do

  • Raise the female labor force participation rate into the 80s

  • I don't know exactly how it still fares, but before the recession US high school kids had a habit of taking after school jobs at around 16 years old. I can't find it now, but before the recession, Republicans were seriously considering lowering that age to 14. Japan could implement this program?

  • Depending on how its counted, an increase in exports and outsourcing might also grow the country's GDP?

  • A smaller workforce might increase wages, thus increasing monetary velocity.

  • The TPP (whatever form it takes now) or other free trade deals might also boost the economy?

  • 846:

    Re: ' ... less litigious society (than USA), ... because no win/no fee or contingency fees are almost unknown here,...'

    Agree for the most part. However, am also wondering whether unlike medicine where the local/state 'Medical College' caps the total number of physicians it licenses as MDs within its geo, there's no such artificial cap on lawyers. This leaves many lawyers scrambling for clients.

    FYI, the US is the most 'litigious' in terms of number of lawyers and Germany in number of court cases (per capita). Recall reading that in the 70s and 80s when it became the fashion for US corps to off-shore tech development to Japan that the Japanese firms would insist on no lawyers present during negotiations because the presence of lawyers indicated distrust.

    https://www.clements.com/sites/default/files/resources/The-Most-Litigious-Countries-in-the-World.pdf

    847:

    Re: ' ..global 'too big to fail' list'

    Would be good to know what the official and practical position is by these banks re: BitCoin because if any of them start trading in this, it automatically affects national banks which means everybody.

    848:

    The TPP (whatever form it takes now) or other free trade deals might also boost the economy?

    Japan has (in the past few days, in fact) signed a free trade agreement with the EU. It's limited to a number of specific sectors, it's not an open-border deal but it's something. Britain is part of this deal, at least up to 11:00 p.m. GMT on 29th March 2019. After that we'll have to start negotiating our own deals with Japan and everyone else which could take a while.

    849:

    Would be good to know what the official and practical position is by these banks re: BitCoin...

    Interestingly, I've been seeing very energetic people who are utterly certain that big banks and Wall Street are very very interested in Bitcoin but who become evasive or angry if asked for any primary sources or examples of serious money people getting anywhere near the churning mess of Bitcoin markets. They are also loudly certain that Bitcoin is the currency of the future because -- hey look, a distraction!

    850:

    PPE? Google's showing that as Personal Protective Equipment when I search…

    851:

    Because I've seen a shedload of adverts for no-win-no-fee solicitors in England over the years.

    What you've probably seen described as "No win no fee" offers are more along the lines of "No win then the insurance policy you've paid out for covers our fees and you're out the cost of the substantial premium" when you look at the small print.

    852:

    Philosophy, Politics and Economics. No direct equivalent at Cambridge.

    853:

    Philosophy, Politics and Economics. No direct equivalent at Cambridge.

    Or anywhere else. It's worth noting that a number of Labour MPs are Oxford PPEs, it's not just an escalator degree for Tory SPADs and the like.

    OTOH Maggie Thatcher's degree was in Chemistry hence her distaste for the toffee-nosed Tories (aka the vegetables[1]) she had to work with.

    [1]Maggie's Cabinet went out to a restaurant to eat. When the waiter came to take the order, Maggie chose steak.

    "What about the vegetables?" asked the waiter.

    "They'll have steak too." said Maggie.

    854:

    Re: Central and big banks & BitCoin

    Chinese wall time for too-big-to-fail financials coming soon. Of course the CW will magically disappear as soon as these players run aground and need another bailout.

    On a serious note: Tried to look up what the World Bank has to say about this but most source urls show 'coin', so perhaps not that neutral. Anyone know if the WB is drafting any guidelines re: BitCoin (privately issued) vs. nationally regulated crypto currencies?

    855:

    SFreader noted: "Canada has no banks on the global 'too big to fail' list, i.e., the global financial community's list of banks that must be propped up no matter how badly they screw up or screw anyone else over."

    No longer true, but this changed very recently: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/royal-bank-1.4411863

    That means the bank is now required to hold reserves of 3.5% beyond the levels that FSB requires of all banks. They appear to have already met or exceeded this standard (Canadian banks are fairly conservative compared with their U.S. kin).

    856:

    "...what constitutes 'economic health' needs a closer look... Why does 'more earnings equals health' - not 'more' health, but 'health' as an absolute?"

    More than that - the whole concept is fundamentally broken and needs to be thrown out.

    The "health" of a country is only meaningfully defined in terms of the wellbeing of the people living there, which has no more to do with money than it does for all the non-human species that have no concept of money, but simply relates to the concerns that arise out of being alive in the first place. Is it easy for the people to get enough food? Is it easy for them to get clean water? Is it easy for them to get somewhere to live? Is it easy for them to get medical care? Do they enjoy good protection against rogue elements who take the piss? And so on and so on.

    It isn't that these things are not readily quantifiable simply by adding up numbers (although that is true), but that they simply aren't considered at a fundamental level. If they were, society would be fundamentally concerned with making sure they happen. Instead, society is fundamentally concerned with making money, and as far as they consider it at all, people just sort of assume that those things will happen of themselves. Which, of course, they don't; so various sub-units of society have to come into being to try and alleviate the situation. That they are sub-units rather than the whole social organism; that they have to come into being (slowly and painfully) rather than existing ab initio; that they continue to exist only on sufferance, and in the face of opposition not only from too many politicians but also from staggeringly large percentages of actual people; that so many of these objectors mistakenly think that their current personal wellbeing is a natural result of the current system, rather than something they enjoy in despite of the current system but in consequence of the despised sub-units they so abominate; all these points go to show that the current system is not "healthy" at all.

    Further evidence is the way the current system distributes the available wellbeing in inverse proportion to its creation. Important people such as nurses and farmers struggle in crappy situations because they're "not productive", when in fact they are directly responsible for the creation of wellbeing, while parasitic arseholes who do nothing more "productive" than concocting abortions in Microsoft Excel or inventing new ways to reduce the planet's ability to support life by promoting incredibly inefficient methods of making things that don't exist (on topic, see?) nevertheless exist in luxury.

    And on top of this, the current system, fundamentally broken as it is, is even further impaired by the fact that nobody even tries to organise it. They hold instead a religious belief that it should just free-run as far as possible, and continue to hold it even as it visibly demolishes the pillars supporting the roof over their heads, occasionally conceding to rationality so far as to cite in support of their views instances of people who did try to organise it and cocked it up, but without realising that they cocked it up largely because they didn't go far enough and so failed to eliminate enough of the fundamentally broken bits.

    And then they push us into leaving the EU because it doesn't suit their free-running ideas, thereby massively exacerbating the negative consequences of the idiotic behaviour that the current degree of free-running encourages (one example out of zillions). This is what really winds me up about this whole leaving-the-EU thing (I refuse to use that horrible porridge word) - while the consequences are to be dreaded, it is infuriating to be one of an apparently so small minority in realising that if the whole thing wasn't allowed to operate in such a batshit insane manner in the first place, neither the consequences nor the means for them to come about would even exist.

    857:

    And so we proceed from Personal Protective Equipment to Signal Passed At Danger...

    Wasn't the vegetables a Spitting Image joke?

    858:

    Forget Bitcoin — have you already heard of CyberSheeps™ ?

    CyberSheeps™ are PVLs (productive virtual livestock), applying easy to understand farming meta-metaphors to the underlying mathematical models and complex calculations (Too difficult; don't bother).

    By “herding”, “feeding”, “breeding” and “shearing” CyberSheeps™ you will soon produce the finest CyberWool for the new virtual futures markets!

    BTW, owning CyberSheeps™ is much easier than “mining” Bitcoin: No ASICs or other specialized hardware is required. Your herd of CyberSheeps™ can be maintained in regular server farms!

    Let computers create money for you: Become a Sheared (a wordplay with “shearer” and “shepherd”) and start CyberWool-gathering today!

    [[Blatant advertisement link removed. Read the moderation policy, fuckwit! ]]

    859:

    Banks lend more than they've got in reserve from savings, but they're limited by law and regulation to lending up to a multiple of that reserve. Bad Things happened when they lent based on imaginative and esoteric valuations of holdings such as mortgages, the rules were tightened again after the dust settled down.

    Works just a little bit differently in the U.S., at least for banks insured by the FDIC (and equivalent agencies for Savings & Loan and Credit Unions), which is almost all of them.

    Insured Financial Institutions are required to maintain a certain percentage of their demand deposits (checking, money market and savings accounts) in "reserve". How high that percentage is depends on what the FDIC thinks their borrowers are likely to default. I don't think there's any real limit on how much they can loan out, only that the more risk the FDIC (and/or Federal Reserve) think their loan portfolio is carrying, the higher the "reserve" required.

    The idea is to minimize how much the FDIC has to shell out to "insured" depositors in event the financial institution collapses.

    Banks fail all the time. So far in 2017, the FDIC has had to bail out seven of them.

    860:

    PPE - in the English education system at least, it's the subject that politically ambitious students go for. It's available from A-level on

    (A-level being the syllabus for the 17-18 year old students, before they go off to University)

    861:

    If access to the law is proportional to how rich you are, the idea that everyone is equal before the law is fucked six ways from Sunday.

    Now you know why the US has higher incarceration rates than most of the rest of the world

    862:

    CyberSheeps™ are PVLs (productive virtual livestock), applying easy to understand farming meta-metaphors to the underlying mathematical models and complex calculations (Too difficult; don't bother).

    Is that anything like the Enron cow?

    863:

    Looks like I called it correctly on Trump ordering NASA to go back to the Moon — only I got the date wrong: he signed the order on the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 17 Moon landing, the last Apollo expedition, rather than targeting a landing for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.

    There's no budget for bread for the polis, but you can fund circuses by tapping the pork barrel.

    864:

    I only played with it a short time, when my son, who was in his teens at the time, got Meier's Civilization (like the Godzilla option), but though that anyone who wanted to be a mayor, or governor, should be required to play, and submit scores considered to be wins from three games out of five....

    865:

    Um, unless you're not on a zombiephone, and have noscript running, and are really picky on what you allow....

    Here's a question, though: if you open a facepalm page, then close it, can they still see what tabs you open not using anything from them?

    866:

    Oh, come on, the migrants have diddly-squat, and aren't going to have diddly-squat, except for a few "special" ones.

    You want Huns and Vandals... Krugman practically called the GOP in Congress that, with this tax bill.

    Really, "austerity", and "smaller government" are euphemisms for is "shut down every trace of socialism, close up the entire social safety net, all that government should be doing is hunting and fighting, er, sorry, defense and dealing with the rabble (i.e, us)".

    867:

    Um, sorry, no. Was WWII, or, for that matter, WWI about religion? The US Civil War?

    It's economics, and political power. I'll note that it was the Emperor of Rome who created the Catholic Church, and swearing to a religion was a loyalty oath (which is one reason the Jews such a pain in the neck: they wouldn't swear loyalty).

    Bigger picture: in a faq that I can't find at the momeny, we distinguished between "tribal" religions - whose main interest was in telling you how to live with each other, from "theological" ones, whose main interest is telling you what to think. Christianity is the latter, which leads, easily, to "they don't believe right! (And we'd like their property/wimmen)".

    Of course, being a red diaper baby, I have serious issues with the word "religion" itself, but then, there's the old Victorian parody, "I have the True Religion, you have a philosophy, they're superstitious."

    But if you want to argue that "all religions do it", show me the war started by, oh, Shinto worshippers, on the basis of their beliefs, and not for power and empire.

    Or Quakers.

    868:

    I'm in the DC metro area. Far more of the time, when I would like to see my doctor, I see a p/a (physician's assistant).

    But then, it was decades ago that I heard about some Famous Doctor giving a lecture in a professor friend's class, and afterwords, he was asking some of the students what they wanted to specialize in. One young woman responded family practice (or was it GP?, and his response was, "why do you want to waste your life that way?"

    The appropriate separator here is $$$$$$$$$$

    869:

    But Charlie, suppose I want to find out how to be Sheared? Why, I need to tell all my friends how they can Get POORER FAST!

    870:

    Whitroth noted: "... that it was the Emperor of Rome who created the Catholic Church, and swearing to a religion was a loyalty oath (which is one reason the Jews such a pain in the neck: they wouldn't swear loyalty)."

    Sort of. First, an important caveat: no single simple concise description such as the one I'm about to provide covers all Jewish groups throughout all periods of the long history of interaction between Romans and a diverse range of Jewish groups and sub-groups.

    That being said, it's more correct to say that most* Jewish citizens of the Roman empire would have been happy to swear loyalty to the empire and obey its laws, but were not prepared to swear that the emperor was their god and treat him as such. Jews thrived in Moorish Spain because they accepted Muslim rules for social stability; those rules didn't force them to give up or pervert their religion. This was in marked contrast with most Catholicized Christian states, which would not tolerate the slightest dissension over religious matters (witness the countless "heresies" that the Catholoc Church felt it necessary to eradicate throughout Christian history).

    • As noted in my caveat, there were many exceptions -- here, in the form of minor and some major rebellions.

    Also, what you said about religion vs. war. Buddhists are most closely associated with religion-wide nonviolence, but there have been many violent Buddhist groups -- which is hard to blame on the principle of ahimsa. Can't think of any violent Quaker groups. Your key point (that religion was not the only or even necessarily major factor behind warfare) is important, and I'm glad you pointed this out.

    871:

    Meanwhile not spending any money on the important bits of NASA - like Earth-Observation staellites that show GW ... Oh & apparently, NASA will have something important to tell us on Thursday ... Probably to do with the Kepler probe/telescope & rumours concerning an "AI" interpretation/use of the data revealing ... whatever-it-is.

    872:

    The point I was trying to make is that the "reserve" requirements are not in practice a constraint on money creation by banks.

    So it's "Hullo, I'd like to borrow 10 million to open another fladget factory as the one I have now is having trouble meeting demand"

    And the bank says "Fine, your credit rating is good and we feel pretty good about loaning you the money. Sign here. Thank you ... tap tap tapity tap, your 10 million is in your account. Nice doing business with you."

    Later that night: "I say, we're 5 million short on our required reserves" and "Fine, I'll set up a loan at the interbank overnight rate (which is nicely below the rates we're charging cusomers) ..tap tap tapity tap..there we go, now we have the required reserves"

    If their fellow banks don't want to loan them the money then the central bank will create money out of nothing with spreadsheet entries and loan it to them.

    In practice reserve requirements to not constrain bank money creating via loans.

    873:

    Um, sorry, no. Was WWII, or, for that matter, WWI about religion? The US Civil War?)

    Ultimately, yes, yes and yes

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfHLYIms97A

    874:

    Sadly, a form of Shintoism is what got the Japanese Empire into trouble in WWII. If you want chapter and verse, I'll start digging, but I'm also stuck with a couple of deadlines, so I'd rather let you have the fascinating (and rather stomach-turning) account of how the Japanese got into Nationalist Ideology, got it in their heads to be a western-style empire, complete with empowering myth (based on Shinto), conquered Korea, Manchuria, and various Pacific Islands, then got so torqued around the idea that Japanese don't surrender that it took two atomic bombs to give the Emperor breathing room to surrender.

    However, you're correct: organized religions are always suborned by local secular powers for their own purposes. Christianity started basically as a non-violent action against the Roman Empire, and remained a freaking nuisance to the same, until Constantine came along, conquered violently in its name, converted, and gave the western Church a bargain that non-violent Christians have been regretting ever since (probably starting before the Cathars, but definitely with them). Taoism has featured broadly in at least one Chinese civil war, despite the fact that most Taoists really would rather be up in the mountains away from it all. You can dig up the others as you wish (check out, for instance, the Ikko-Ikki)

    Note in each case that socio-economic factors got painted as "Us vs. Them," and that can be (not always) rephrased as "they are evil unbelievers," when some authoritarian ideologue is whipping up support for his proposed violent action.

    On the flip side, there are even more wars that aren't about religion: fighting off the barbarians, for instance. Or the current Afghan and Iraq wars. The latter's about oil (Iraq was an extremely diverse country prior to invasion, Afghanistan was about trying to pretend to stop terrorism, with a big ol' side of mining and War on Drugs on the other). This also includes WWI, WWII, and the American and most other civil wars.

    875:

    As for WWII being about religion, nope: fascism isn't a religion, it's a political ideology. WWI was the detente of the colonial empires falling apart, and the American Civil War was about slavery, pure and simple.

    You can also note that communist nations are officially atheist, so all the wars the USSR, Soviet China, and their proxies have been involved in (such as the Vietnam War, the Korean War, WWII, their own internecine struggles, the ongoing civil wars in Nepal and India, the Colombian civil war, and all the other proxy wars of the Cold War), are therefore not about religion, but ideology.

    876:

    Attempts to slavesplain the American Civil War are not going to be tolerated, so STOP IT.

    877:

    You see all those little facebook and twitter icons on various blogs and websites and news pages? They allow the social networks to track you just as well as cookies — by tracking the image loading targets.

    878:

    Re: 7 bank failures

    So, about 1% of US banks failed. Any idea what the $ share was?

    'According to the FDIC, there were 6,799 FDIC-insured commercial banks in the United States as of February 11, 2014.'

    Was looking for number of credit union failures for the same time span to see how they compared and found this: USian participation in (not-for-profit) credit unions is growing.

    'Membership in federally insured credit unions grew to 102.7 million at the end of 2015, an increase of 3.5 million from the end of the fourth quarter of 2014. Mar 3, 2016'

    'Credit Union Deposits Surpass $1 Trillion - NCUA'

    https://www.ncua.gov/newsroom/Pages/news-2016-march-call-report-data.aspx

    879:

    Dumb question time:

    Cryptocurrencies using blockchain. Okay, I get that the entire history of this new currency is supposedly captured for eternity and is growing longer and longer with each transaction.

    Fine - but just how readable is it? Can anyone read it?

    Does the stock exchange that allows trading of this new commodity/money instrument read it to ensure that it is not tied to illegal ventures? Can potential buyers cherry-pick who they buy from?

    And, when sold/traded on a stock exchange, is the entire history read to ensure that this commodity's value is not being manipulated/coordinated by a smallish group of traders? (No kiting or selling back and forth to create a market? No blockages of people who may want to trade at a lower rate thereby disrupting the uptick? There are lots of scams possible.)

    880:

    the fascinating (and rather stomach-turning) account of how the Japanese got into Nationalist Ideology, got it in their heads to be a western-style empire, complete with empowering myth (based on Shinto), conquered Korea, Manchuria, and various Pacific Islands,

    Is there an equivalent (stomach-turning or not) account of how the Americans got into Nationalist Ideology, got it in their heads to be a Pacific empire complete with empowering myth (based on Manifest Destiny), conquered Hawaii, the Philippines and occupied various other Pacific Islands?

    881:

    If their fellow banks don't want to loan them the money then the central bank will create money out of nothing with spreadsheet entries and loan it to them.

    It will? The Bank of Credit and Commerce International would like a few words with the Bank of England in that case. Or not, perhaps because the BoE famously let the BCCI swing in the wind when they ran into the buffers by lending too much and not having enough reserves (and being a bunch of unregenerate crooks and money launderers and not signed up to the FDIC so their small savers were screwed when it went under). Being members of the FDIC requires the bank to open its books and the BCCI was in no condition to do so, of course.

    If the central bank is willing to extend further credit to a bank to shore up its reserves then well and good but at that point the debtor bank is just that, a debtor and under close scrutiny by the lenders. The Bank of Greece is another case where the lender banks including the ECB said "enough is enough" and let them swing in the wind.

    882:

    It will?

    Yes, it will. The Bank of England stated this quite explicitly on it's website a couple of years back.

    The Bank of Credit and Commerce International would like a few words with the Bank of England in that case.

    England is a sovereign (literally) government with it's own sovereign (again, literally) currency and can tell the Bank you refer to where to put their objections.

    And England does not place any reserve requirements on it's banks if Wikipedia is to be believed (admittedly a dicey matter).

    883:

    Yes, and it is.

    You could do worse than starting with Dee Brown's classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I'm up against a deadline for the next couple of days, but can provide further reading this weekend (if you remind me).

    884:

    From what I've understood of Charlie's explanations in the past, currency in the UK is issued by a bank, not by the government, and so the Bank of England is what issues it. The government regulates it, for sure, but it's still issued by a bank.

    I could be mistaken in my understanding.

    885:

    Of course any one bank being hung out to dry by any one central bank doesn't mean that the system isn't roughly as you described in most cases.

    Nor does it mean that it's not in a way even worse than that. Your point about reserves still stands. Say the Flaget factory owner gets his loan and money is created out of nothing and handed over. He then spends that dosh at "Flaget Factories 'R' Us". They put it in their bank, who now has a 'deposit' upon which they can lend money. It may even be the very same bank, though it doesn't really matter overall which bank, because these sort of transactions are going in and out of banks all the time. That created money, which seemed a bit dodgy is now completely secure, real money that can be used as a reserve. As all the banks are creating such money and all the people are being paid with such money deposit it, the overall effect is that as that money is created, it's then put straight back into a bank where it can make more money appear out of nothing. That's where money comes from. Printing currency has little or nothing to do with the economy anymore.

    886:

    Oddly enough, I'm not as well-read on US history of conquest and bloodshed, which quite honestly goes back to some time shortly after 1492. The reason is simple: I was working on a book set around WWII and featuring Korea's history as a colony of Japan. I did a nose-dive into the history of Japan as seen from the Korean side, and that's why I know stuff about Japan.

    In any case, the works you'd be looking for involve such ideas as Manifest Destiny, the Spanish-American War (Philippines and Cuba), and the aftermath of the WWII War in the Pacific and the Cold War. I'm not well-read on Hawaiian history around the time of the American conquest. IIRC a cabal of sugar plantation owners got together to call in the marines and oust the Hawaiian monarchy. Since Hawai'i was an independent country at that point, it was a conquest. If you want to get in an argument, try calling a native Hawaiian a Native American. If you want a history of what led up to the American conquest of Hawai'i, There's a book called A Shark Going Inland is My Chief which is an excellent mix of archaeology and history.

    887:

    From what I've understood of Charlie's explanations in the past, currency in the UK is issued by a bank, not by the government, and so the Bank of England is what issues it. The government regulates it, for sure, but it's still issued by a bank.

    The Bank of England is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Government of England, which can tell it to issue whatever it wants. It was nationalized in 1945 and in 1998 became an "independent public organization, wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government" (google), but of course the government can take back such powers as it has delegated to the Bank any time it likes.

    888:

    That's where money comes from. Printing currency has little or nothing to do with the economy anymore.

    Yes, but I believe coins and bills are created by the Mint (at least they are in Canada) and are part of what is called "high power money". Their influence on the economy is not that small if you consider illegal drug traffic, prostitution, and so on as part of the economy.

    889:
    So, about 1% of US banks failed. Any idea what the $ share was?

    No idea.

    If you google "how many U.S.banks have failed this year" you should come up with the same FDIC web-page I found that listed the seven banks along with the dollar amounts of the assets/liabilities, whether another bank bought out the assets or assumed the liabilities, how much that other bank paid for the assets/liabilities and how much the FDIC paid out ...

    When banks are just closed down the FDIC has to pay the depositors (up to the limit of deposit insurance). But sometimes the FDIC can find another bank to take over the failing bank which may reduce how much the FDIC has to pay.

    That wasn't really my point. I was addressing how U.S. bank regulators determine the "reserves" banks are required to keep on hand.

    How much reserves a bank is required to keep on hand is a percentage of their demand deposits based on how much "risk" of default the FDIC finds the bank is carrying.

    Was looking for number of credit union failures for the same time span to see how they compared and found this: USian participation in (not-for-profit) credit unions is growing.

    Credit Union deposits are insured by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF), a separate fund created by Congress to insure

    https://www.ncua.gov/services/Pages/closed-credit-unions.aspx

    https://www.ncua.gov/services/Pages/closed-credit-unions/2017.aspx

    Looks like five failures in 2017 with only one that couldn't be taken over by another Credit Union (complete liquidation). Credit Unions have lower risk because they don't make business loans.

    890:

    Reagan did the same thing in the Rust Belt/Apppalachia.

    As someone who moved to the Pittsburgh area in January 1980 then left in early 87, your analysis is, well, wrong. Most Reagan didn't shut down the mills, the owners and unions did it to themselves in a circular firing squad. Then the workers MOSTLY sat around waiting for the mills to re-open. As they were dismantled and trucked away for scrap. Now the areas are filled with strip malls and gentrified areas. It is nice now in many ways. But it required the work force to basically age into social security for major changes to happen.

    I left in 87 because it was so damn depressing to live there.

    891:

    6. I don't know exactly how it still fares, but before the recession US high school kids had a habit of taking after school jobs at around 16 years old. I can't find it now, but before the recession, Republicans were seriously considering lowering that age to 14. Japan could implement this program?

    This is mostly a state issue (I think).

    But in most places kids can work at age 14. There are very sharp restrictions on hours and duties. Which turns most of them into fast food or easy retail cashiers at 10 to 20 hours per week. Both of my kids started working then. (I told them if they wanted to go to first run full price movies or buy shiny toys they would have to pay for them with their own money.)

    893:

    Here's a question, though: if you open a facepalm page, then close it, can they still see what tabs you open not using anything from them?

    If you have scripts running and not in a private window I think. But we're past my knowledge base now.

    894:

    but there have been many violent Buddhist groups

    Like in a place known for a while as Burma?

    895:

    I'm not well-read on Hawaiian history around the time of the American conquest. IIRC a cabal of sugar plantation owners got together to call in the marines and oust the Hawaiian monarchy.

    Some missionary families went over to save the souls. Their grandkids (maybe their kids) said enough of this, there are pots of gold here if we organize. So they did. That's where a lot of those plantations came from.

    There's a lot of money floating around from those descended from missionaries. They now invest in all kinds of things around the world.

    And there was some inter marriage so there's also some rich Hawaiian blood lines mixed in all of it.

    896:

    Not a banker but I'm fairly certain that is not how reserves work in the US.

    897:

    Not quite Sean, no.

    The Bank of England is empowered to issue "legal tender" on behalf of the Government (Legal tender being coin of the realm and certain currency notes (US bills) which must be accepted in payment for purchases, invoices and taxes. Legal tender is backed by the Government (treasury) reserves which include various negotiable commodities and debt securities (normally known as gilts), reserves of foreign (to us) currency and the like.

    Certain other retail (normally called 'clearing') banks are also legally empowered to issue their own bills of exchange, which are treated as currency notes by a large part of the population. These bills of exchange must be backed by funds which the issuing clearing bank has on deposit at the BoE. This privilege is presently extended to the "Bank of Scotland", the "Clydesdale Bank" and "Royal Bank of Scotland" (all Scottish), to the "Big 4" Northern Irish clearing banks, and to none of the English clearing banks except where it exists by virtue of one of the banks which do have this privilege being a wholly owned subsidiary of an English clearing bank (for example Ulster Bank is a subsidiary of National Westminster Bank, and UB issues its own notes in Northern Ireland although NatWest may not issue notes in its own name).

    898:

    That's the second time someone's said we don't have no-win-no-fee here. Is "here", then, specifically Scotland? Because I've seen a shedload of adverts for no-win-no-fee solicitors in England over the years.

    Yes, I specified Scotland. In Scotland there are limited provisions for contingency fees (you pay a smaller amount if you lose but more if you win - which comes from your award), and the "Compensure" (post incident insurance scheme operated by a couple of firms), but generally the rules are against the lawyers having a personal interest in the outcome of a case.

    In England the professional rules now allow Conditional Fee Agreements where the extra payable on success forms part of the expenses payable by the losing side, and "post incident insurance" (the premiums for which are an allowable expense against the other side if you win), which taken together create a form of "no-win no-fee" (generally for the benefit of insurers).

    Thing is, of course, there should not even be any "fees", and it should all be done via "legal aid". If access to the law is proportional to how rich you are, the idea that everyone is equal before the law is fucked six ways from Sunday.

    Now you just have to persuade the politicians, who for decades have been seeking to make the courts self-funding, as well as continually cutting Legal Aid. When lawyers raise this they are brushed aside on the grounds of being self interested, with the politicians "protecting tax payers money".

    Note Scottish Legal Aid fees have not been increased since 1989, despite the admin and other work Solicitors are required to carry out to get the fee having increased massively over the same period.

    The ruling in the recent Supreme Court case R (per Unison) v Lord Chancellor did have lengthy comments about the public benefit of access to the courts and how fees or costs should not be a barrier, but that appears to have fallen on deaf ears amongst every variety of politician.

    There are however good grounds to require anyone raising a court action to have to put something into the case to avoid purely speculative and meretricious actions. It is a question of balance.

    AFAIK a significant reason for the UK being less litigious than the US is that it's the courts rather than the plaintiff who decide how much the "damages" are - or something along those lines, anyway

    Yes, in the UK the issue of fault is a question of fact, which can be decided by jury (although in Scotland civil juries are now like hens teeth, generally the judge will now deal with fact & law), while the amount of damages is a question of law to be decided by the judge based on established legal rules.

    In many US jurisdictions, both liability and the amount for damages are a question for the jury. Also in pure Common Law jurisdictions (UK minus Scotland, most of USA) there are concepts such as punitive damages where the award includes a "punishment" to the person at fault. Where this is at the discretion of a jury, unfettered by specific legal rules, they may think "this company has billions, they should be punished, therefore award millions" even for very minor injuries. See "The Stella Awards" for egregious examples.

    In Scotland (and commonly in Civil Law jurisdictions), the award is to compensate loss/injury only, so limited to that actual loss (all be it including estimates for future losses where appropriate).

    899:

    Credit Unions have lower risk because they don't make business loans.

    A quibble: In the US credit unions do indeed make business loans. The businesses they loan to and the risk assessments they make may indeed be statistically different from those of banks; I've no more than casually chatted about this with credit union loan officers.

    900:

    See "The Stella Awards" for egregious examples.

    Didn't know about that site. Thanks.

    I remember studying the original Stella case briefly while taking a class in liability law. What puzzled the engineers in the room was that most home coffee makers (at the time) produced coffee hotter than MacDonald's coffee.

    I recall our lecturer (a practicing lawyer) making the point that jury awards are often based on emotion not facts and logic, but I may be conflating him with other lawyers I've talked to.

    901:

    I think you are at risk of misunderstanding how banking regulation works, and possibly don't understand what reserves actually are. In practical terms there are lots of constraints on a bank including both Capital and Liquidity requirements, such that the scenario you describe is rare without one of others being breached and the bank shut down, although I'd have to do more research to be sure.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_regulation#Instruments_and_requirements_of_bank_regulation

    It should be noted that Im talking about decent sized banks (Big Domestic or International)- I've lost track of where regulation of Mom and Pop Banks has got to.

    902:

    You're right. Remember that in the comment I was responding to, Charlie blames Thatcher for shutting the UK's steel industry, and I didn't want to go off on that tangent. Reagan did as much to close the steel mills in the US as Thatcher did in the UK.

  • They really didn't. As you say, the unions and owners did it "in a circular firing squad"

  • Steel production in the US did fall from 70 Million metric tons (MMT) to around 50 MMT by the end of the 80s.

  • http://theglitteringeye.com/trade-unions-or-de-industrialization/

    At the same time, the share of workers declined much faster from 500k to 147k

    http://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/infographics/2016/09/bg3150/bg-global-steel-market-chart-1-825.jpg

    Both of these trends were due to

    a. Automation. You can't blame either Reagan or Thatcher for this b. Outsourcing. Here you can blame them. Or praise them for this. Both made their economies much more global with the signing of free trade deals. Since that helped S. Korea, Taiwan, and (possibly) Singapore and Hong Kong transform into developed countries, some might say it was well worth the price.

    I'm willing to assume the same is true for coal.

    903:

    I don't agree with the unions doing it, but rigidity and stupidity helped.

    However, my father, who worked at a steel plant for about 9 years, lost his job in the mid-1950's... when the owners ran away to the South for cheap, non-union labor. Unions started finally moving south... and offshoring became the thing for them, so that, based on labor costs, they were dumping steel in the West.

    On the other hand, unions lost a huge amount of power, and yes, Raygun DID do that. In, I think it was '81, was the air traffic controllers' strike (and they were striking not just for better hours and pay, but UPGRADES TO THE COMPUTER SYSTEMS), and Raygun broke the strike, which he deliberately intended as a message to corporations that it was time for the War on Unions that they'd wanted since FDR made them fully legal in the US.

    I wasn't watching the UK closely enough then, but I suspect Thatcher and her corporate support jumped on that bandwagon.

    904:

    While I was in Pittsburgh the local paper wrote a long article or articles on the state of the steel industry. Two big points.

    Domestic use per capita was cut in half from the 50s to the 80s. Aluminum and plastic in cars for an example of a big part of it. Toss in uni-body for good measure.

    But also after WWII we exported something like 1/2 of our steel. Over the next 20 years the rest of the world built (and built back) their own industries. So by the mid 80s we were running relatively close to even. Blame whoever in the US but the rest of the world really didn't want to buy from us forever.

    905:

    I was around a lot of unemployed union workers. Some were good and smart. But many were not. (Willingly or not I'll not go into.) People upset that no one would pay them $20 / hour (1984) with no high school diploma and a goal in life to have the Atari high score? Give me a break.

    But both unions and owners ignored (on purpose) things like continuous casting until the rest of the world got good at it. Management didn't like the investment costs. Unions didn't like the loss of jobs. In the end there was no need for investment and no jobs.

    906:

    Good point. In the 50s and 60s we were selling stuff to rebuild the rest of the industrialized world. Which was in ruins because they had had wars fought through them, been heavily bombed, or at least been overstrained in WWII.

    907:

    Narrowing the definition of what constitutes a religion to that which resembles the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity, unfortunately serves the agenda of those who wish to delegitimise other kinds of beliefs. Religion gets special protections and privileges in some jurisdictions which non-religious philosophies of life do not.

    There isn't a simple litmus test for whether something is religion. Although most familiar religions have supernatural elements this is not a necessary condition. Atheist religions exist as the examples of Buddhism or Confucianism show. Syncretism is widely practised outside the Abrahamic sphere with an atheist religion incorporating folk beliefs in supernatural elements.

    There is a list of religious features and the more boxes ticked the more religion-like the beliefs - [1] Venerated founder/prophet [2] List of rules to live by [3] Ceremonies and rituals [4] Special/forbidden foods [5] Special places [6] Special artefacts [7] Special book/text [8] A priesthood [9] Gods, creation myths etc

    Checking off this list and remembering Mein Kampf or Lenin's preserved body in a glass box, or Party Membership it is clear why Nazism and Communism can be regarded as modern religions just as evil as the older ones.

    908:

    Well, the Buddhist nut-cases* in Myanmar who have declared holy war on Muslims, under the theory that a goal of Islam is to wipe out Buddhism (where'd they get that idea?) is one example. If you want rather more interested in the shaolin ghost-faced monks (RZA didn't make that up). They were, well, not quite mercenaries, not quite avowed monks, and definitely armed with whatever they could get their hands on, up to military guns (and the transliterated word for staff in Chinese is "gun," so read carefully). According to some authors, they also go their asses handed to them by the Wokou that Qi Jiguang subsequently defeated with highly trained peasant levies during the middle Ming dynasty, which is a whole other story that might be of peripheral interest to some. Still, there's a huge amount of shaolin mythologizing that can be wiped away, if anyone cares to do so.

    Other fun ventures into the dark underbelly of Buddhism is the whole Ikko-Ikki uprising/mess at the end of the Japanese Warring States period. This period also included the sohei (armed monks guarding temples and not paying much attention to the Eightfolf Way), and a lot of temple burning that resulted from the actions of the sohei.

    When I want to get anxious about the kind of violence that Christian Identity and evangelical movements might get up to, I look at the Ikko-Ikki. The similarities are obvious, and one could easily see something like that happening in America if things get bad enough (indeed, there's an easy military SF series a la the Honorverse sitting there waiting for the right author who can transpose the Ikko-Ikki into space, or mid-century US, or wherever).

    Authors looking for inspiration might also want to peruse the rather amazing career of Qi Jiguang, a military genius who was apparently terrified of his wife, so he stayed out on campaign for most of his life (he had a number of concubines), won some key battles against seriously bad odds (both military and political) using innovative weapons, tactics, and training, and was predictably forced out in a (ginned-up) scandal, to the detriment of the long-term survival of the Ming dyansty.

    Finally, if you want truly interesting, there's this little-known, truly non-violent Buddhist martial art reportedly created and practiced by monks in Myanmar. Sadly, there don't seem to be any instructors near me, but if you live in the DC area, you can learn it and see if it works.

    *Buddhist nut-cases. AFAIK, there are some offenses which get you immediately thrown out if you're a Buddhist monk who has taken the vows. One of those is murder. Thus, the idea of monks killing muslims is crazy on its face. However, there's apparently some Buddhist case-law or whatever from Sri Lanka to the effect that people who attack monastic communities are animals, not humans, and killing them in defense of the monastery isn't murder. There's always an apologist somewhere, and sadly, that text didn't fall to the bookworms fast enough. I'd point out also that shaolin warriors who kill people weren't monks as we understand them, nor were the sohei.

    909:
    "6. I don't know exactly how it still fares, but before the recession US high school kids had a habit of taking after school jobs at around 16 years old. I can't find it now, but before the recession, Republicans were seriously considering lowering that age to 14. Japan could implement this program?

    This is mostly a state issue (I think).

    But in most places kids can work at age 14. There are very sharp restrictions on hours and duties. Which turns most of them into fast food or easy retail cashiers at 10 to 20 hours per week. Both of my kids started working then. (I told them if they wanted to go to first run full price movies or buy shiny toys they would have to pay for them with their own money.)

    I got a work permit at age 13, so I could get my first real J-O-B, operating the popcorn machine at a theatre. I was only allowed to work on weekend days.

    Laws have changed a bit since then. I doubt a 13 y.o. would be allowed to operate that popcorn machine today (if the state would even issue them a work permit). There are age graded restrictions. A 14 y.o. can only work so many hours during the school week; a 16 y.o. can work a bit longer, but to operate certain machinery in a fast food joint, you have to be a minimum 18 y.o.

    Teenagers can work almost full time during the summer when school is out. Additionally, there are still exemptions for children performing farm work.

    910:

    Like in a place known for a while as Burma?

    I always enjoyed their signs when my family traveled when I was a child

    911:

    I wonder if that means anything outside of pre 1960s USA.

    912:
    See "The Stella Awards" for egregious examples.

    Didn't know about that site. Thanks.

    I remember studying the original Stella case briefly while taking a class in liability law. What puzzled the engineers in the room was that most home coffee makers (at the time) produced coffee hotter than MacDonald's coffee.

    I recall our lecturer (a practicing lawyer) making the point that jury awards are often based on emotion not facts and logic, but I may be conflating him with other lawyers I've talked to.

    While there are always frivolous lawsuits, Stella Liebeck's suit against McDonalds is not actually one of them.

    The frivolous lawsuits most frequently cited for "Stella Awards" are almost all fabricated or urban legends.

    913:

    It must be reasonably pervasive, because even with my lack of familiarity with US popular culture I still chuckled at JBS's post immediately on reading it :)

    914:

    "While there are always frivolous lawsuits, Stella Liebeck's suit against McDonalds is not actually one of them."

    Having only heard about it through hearsay citings of it as one that archetypically was, I read up on it when I first heard someone say that, several years ago now. What I found out did not change my opinion; rather, it provided facts to back it up. She held a flexible disposable cup between her legs (while sitting in a car seat) to prise the lid off (which is a really stupid thing to do because it pretty much guarantees you're going to spill quite a lot of it when the lid does come off), and then argued that she should get some money because she didn't think "hot" actually meant "hot" (which is also really stupid). It is my opinion that suing other people for the consequences of one's own stupidity should not even be possible, let alone successful, and my reading about it provided clear evidence to move the supposition that this was a case of that kind from the realm of hearsay to the realm of fact.

    915:

    Thatcher had a wide-on for privatisation, hated nationalised industries (which both steel and coal were until her government got involved), and specifically wanted to break the power of the unions because the coal union (NUM) had got the better of the government three times (including inducing an election) in the past decade - on the last occasion the government being hers.

    The decline of steel is distinctly overshadowed by the decline of coal, which was always bigger, involved much the same parts of the country, and monopolised everyone's attention during the epic 80s miners' strike. It must be admitted that much of the reason why that strike was so acrimonious and ultimately unsuccessful was that Scargill was much the same kind of cunt as Thatcher only with an opposite political orientation, but it is still the case that Thatcher started the dispute between her government and the NUM (that "last occasion" above) and that smashing the whole thing up was her explicit intention all the way through.

    916:

    The coffee was 82-88 degrees C in the cup. Which is fairly standard for takeaway coffee.
    She initially requested McDonalds cover her basic medical bills, which for the bad PR and injuries requiring skin grafts ... does seem fair enough. McDonalds declined.
    However McDonalds had had more than 700 reported burn cases in the leadup to this example, without modifying their practices in any way.

    That was deemed reckless and is what the damages were about.

    After the case, McDonalds modified their cup design.

    I agree, suing people because you were stupid should be discouraged, but equally corporates need to shoulder a certain amount of responsibility if their product has an obvious flaw and they take no steps to rectify it or alert customers, especially over a prolonged period.

    917:

    Sadly, a form of Shintoism is what got the Japanese Empire into trouble in WWII.

    Sadly, no.

    The head of the Shinto religion, i.e. the Emporer, was against the WWII shenanigans. But, being overseas educated, he believed in the principles of "constitutional democracy", and therefore believed it was his role to acquiesce to whatever the elected government decreed.

    That is, there are various reasons why the Japanese "Empire" got into trouble in WWII, but "Shintoism" is really not one of them...

    The wrong response by a government faced by an oil embargo however was a major reason.This was absolutely the wrong response, not to mention a suidical response, but it had nothing to do with "religion"!

    918:

    While there are always frivolous lawsuits, Stella Liebeck's suit against McDonalds is not actually one of them.

    I don't know enough about the case to argue for or against frivolousness.

    We were mostly looking at product liability, and what stuck in my memory was the temperature — and how if MacDonald's coffee was hot enough to make them liable, then everyone who served a guest a cup of coffee at home should be equally liable (as the coffee would be at least that hot).

    919:

    Sadly, a form of Shintoism is what got the Japanese Empire into trouble in WWII.

    Sadly, no.

    The head of the Shinto religion, i.e. the Emporer, was against the WWII shenanigans. But, being overseas educated, he believed in the principles of "constitutional democracy", and therefore believed it was his role to acquiesce to whatever the elected government decreed.

    That is, there are various reasons why the Japanese "Empire" got into trouble in WWII, but "Shintoism" is really not one of them...

    The wrong response by a government faced by an oil embargo however was a major reason.This was absolutely the wrong response, not to mention a suidical response, but it had nothing to do with "religion"!

    Revisionist history. There's a useful 2001 book Downfall: The End of the Japanese Empire. It's straight up history, based largely on documents declassified in the 50 years after the war ended.

    The tl;dr version is that the Emperor and his family were intimately involved in the war. The only reason they were not deposed and tried as war criminals was that Japan was falling apart, communists were rioting in the streets, and Gen. MacArthur unilaterally decided that keeping the Japanese emperor as a figure-head around which to form a pro-American government was preferable to losing Japan to the communists. From that point on, history got revised to down-play the role of the emperor in WWII, but the remaining records from the time are pretty unequivocal about what happened.

    920:

    Not on topic, but perhaps of interest to those facing Brexit, RAND has examined various "so what then?" scenarios:

    https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/brexit-economic-implications.html

    921:

    We were mostly looking at product liability, and what stuck in my memory was the temperature — and how if MacDonald's coffee was hot enough to make them liable, then everyone who served a guest a cup of coffee at home should be equally liable (as the coffee would be at least that hot).

    The coffee was TOO HOT to drink. It was unsafe to consume as served.

    McDonald's had received over 700 prior complaints from customers who had been burned by McDonald's coffee. McDonald's had already paid out half a million dollars to settle prior claims. The majority of those claims were from customers who tried to drink the coffee & suffered burns to the mouth & throat.

    The jury award was based on those prior complaints & settlements. It wasn't just that the coffee was too hot, but that McDonald's KNEW the coffee was dangerous and continued to serve it like that anyway. McDonald's were found liable because they had ample prior notice of the danger & refused to mitigate it.

    922:

    The coffee was TOO HOT to drink. It was unsafe to consume as served.

    Home coffeemakers (of that era, anyway) produce coffee of that temperature or higher. So if I serve you coffee at home am I legally liable if I don't warn you "careful it's hot"?

    Any lawyers here who can offer an explanation of why MacDonalds coffee was too hot but home-made coffee wasn't? That's what puzzled us then, and still puzzles me now. (The explanation I've always believed was "jury sympathized with plaintiff not big corp" but if that's wrong I'd like to have a better understanding of the (apparent) discrepancy.)

    923:

    So if I serve you coffee at home am I legally liable if I don't warn you "careful it's hot"?

    Explanations I've heard are that "takeaway" coffee is drunk some time after it is made, outside the premises and if it was sold at regular at-home temperatures then it would be cold or at least cool by the time the first sip is taken. It doesn't help that paper cups don't retain heat as well as ceramic cups would. There was also a claim that MacDonalds use a cheap bean blend that benefits from high temperature service in terms of taste although I don't know how true that is. I personally drink a cheap instant "rough as a badger's arse" coffee blend which I've grown used to although my occasional forays into Jamaica Blue Mountain tell me what I'm missing. I have no taste.

    The cup lid design of all takeaway coffee shops has been muchly revamped, allowing the "sippy-cup" method of drinking which reduces the chance of a spill rather than the previous design requiring the lid to be removed completely while having it stay in place reliably otherwise. Drive-through service doesn't help.

    924:

    Except that when we measured (being engineering students) the home coffee maker we tested served HOTTER coffee than the MacDonalds coffee supposedly was in the case. That's what's confusing me about MacDonalds supposedly being liable because their coffee was too hot — it was actually cooler than our lab coffee maker and home machine.

    Badly designed cups and lids, yeah, I remember those.

    925:

    "The coffee was TOO HOT to drink. It was unsafe to consume as served."

    That's normal. The clue is in the word "hot". Being made at temperatures high enough to cause chemical changes in biological materials is how hot drinks and hot food work. They inherently come into existence at too high a temperature for immediate consumption and so checking that they've cooled down is a standard part of drinking/eating them.

    It isn't useful to claim "it was dangerous", because it simply isn't true in any practical sense. It's only true in the same narrow technical sense that getting out of bed is dangerous (after all, people sometimes die doing that). It's exactly what you expect from any hot drink or food, no matter the source, and no normal person calls hot drinks or food "dangerous" any more than they call getting out of bed that.

    "The majority of those claims were from customers who tried to drink the coffee & suffered burns to the mouth & throat."

    For crying out loud, this is something you learn when you're a little kid as soon as you're old enough to start having hot things: Sometimes they are too hot so you start with a tiny nibble or a tiny sip to check just how hot they are. You don't just bloody swig a big gulp regardless and run around going aargh aargh aargh while the lining of your throat peels off, or not more than once at any rate and that once is when you're still little. This is really basic stuff. Given how prehistorically ancient the practice of cooking is, there really is no kind of excuse for anyone in modern times not knowing how to eat/drink hot things.

    And this does not count as showing that "they knew it was dangerous"; all it shows is that in a country the size of the US the pool is large enough that you can actually find 700 people who are both ignorant enough not to know how to drink hot things and arrogant enough to blame some random entity which had nothing to do with their upbringing for their own ignorance.

    926:

    It looks as if the main difference between you and me is that you find it puzzling while I find it exasperating :) That "discrepancy" is the kind of thing of which I say that while you might find an explanation, you won't find a reason; you'll just find a tree of stupidity which grows exponentially the further you look into it, which might count as an explanation if you can ever get the recursion to terminate, but can't possibly count as reasonable no matter how you look at it.

    927:

    "The coffee was 82-88 degrees C in the cup. Which is fairly standard for takeaway coffee."

    Urgh phah. American's shouldn't be allowed to import coffee if that's what they do to it.

    928:

    "everyone who served a guest a cup of coffee at home should be equally liable (as the coffee would be at least that hot)"

    Please remind me of this if I'm ever over at your place. A simple "I ruin my coffee before serving, you will need to spit it out as it will be utterly disgusting" should suffice.

    929:

    Just pulled out my Sous Vide kit... My 300 dollar digital thermometer said that as I poured the coffee into the cup it was at 78 C (third digit was all over the shop. I carried the cup out to the lounge room and measured again, it was 73.6 C. At that point I would have said to a guest, "mind, it's hot".

    After typing that paragraph I measured it again, it's now at a temperature where I'll drink it but I drink my coffee hotter than most people. 66.1 C. I can taste that I've slightly burnt the roof of my mouth.

    That's a black coffee made in what we call a 'French Press' off vigorously boiling water.

    To say that you'd serve 88 C coffee to guests... The mind boggles. I'd have had to microwave it. It would have tasted burnt and I'd have spat it out.

    930:

    There must have been a reason, at least legally. Or explanation if you prefer.

    From what I remember of the course (it was back in the 1980s) the explanation/reason was that the jury felt sorry for the woman and felt MacDonalds could pay. This may be my poor memory, or the prof could have been wrong, or I misunderstood him…

    There were other cases that stuck in memory (like the chap who decided to use his lawnmower as a hedge trimmer and ended up under it with a flailed chest), all pointing to what seemed like crazy liability awards south of the border. And there were Canadian cases that seemed silly too, like the chap who cut through a chain-link fence to go snowmobiling on private land and ended up in a gravel pit winning his case because the 'cliff' wasn't posted…

    931:

    Please remind me of this if I'm ever over at your place.

    Unlikely, given your opinion of me.

    To say that you'd serve 88 C coffee to guests... The mind boggles.

    Shrug. All I know is what we measured back when taking the course. Don't even remember the number, just "hotter than the 'too hot' MacDonalds coffee".

    We had a coffee machine at the lab, and someone measured their home machine. No idea whether it was a percolator (they were pretty standard back then) or something else — I wasn't the chap measuring.

    932:

    More fun with 'coffee'. I just got out a builders mug. Boiled the jug, and slopped it in. Stirred quickly for 15 turns with a teaspoon (about 4 seconds), did the traditional tap tap with the spoon on the side of the mug and carried it from the kitchen to the lounge. 80.3 C, dropping to 80.2 C within a few seconds.

    88 degrees is far hotter than you could ever serve to guests without a quick shot in the microwave just before handing it over.

    I just tried it again with a thin walled cup rather than the chunky 'builders mug'. It hit 81.1, so more than the builders cup, but only for a second or two. Within 5 seconds it was 79.9 and falling fast. About the amount of time for the traditional 'Here's your coffee, mind, it's hot' followed by 'ohhh you're a life saver'.

    So even instant 'coffee', you'd be hard pressed to serve it over 80 degrees. Tea would be much cooler of course as it has to have time to brew.

    Just looked up drip coffee and they recommend that the coffee coming out of the filter should be at 82. Put that in a mug and you'll be in the mid 60's.

    933:

    Oh, it looks like you were composing while I was playing with thermometers and cups.

    Your measurements and mine don't agree. I don't know why. I calibrated against slush -0.3, boiling water 99.3/6 and had a quick sanity check with body temperature in the middle 36.1. All seemed about 0.3 low but I ignored it thinking that within a degree would be ample. I'm about 30 metres above sea level. I used tap water not distilled.

    I would have responded quicker but I re-did the calibration and had to freeze some ice.

    Who knows.

    Oh, and bad coffee making doesn't mean someone's a bad person. If I've voiced an opinion on you personally, I've sadly forgotten. Which might be a worse slight I suppose, but it's not meant with malice. My intent is never to dislike the person, just the ideas, but I'm subject to failings at frequent intervals.

    934:

    There's a US comedian, Bill Engvall who has a catch phrase of "Here's your sign". It is a sign that he feels stupid people should wear so the rest of us could act according around them.

    Here's a youtube of one of his bits. Video is only still so bandwidth is likely low.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBjelRDKHUk

    935:

    If you want to know where the libertarian/neo-fascism connection comes from, the answer is really Hans-Hermann Hoppe and his book "Democracy, the God That Failed." It is an amazingly nasty book, but basically,it states that "freedom" is compatible with the existence of non-whites, homosexuals, and a host of other groups. It also says that not believing in the primacy of property rights makes you rightfully chattel. If you try to read it, be sure to have a bucket handy.

    This book comes up again and again around these people, it was mentioned in the recent nytimes piece, and if you've ever heard the phrase "Physical Removal" it originated with Hoppe.

    936:

    Well, I borked that and the link is to the alt-right piece that mentions Hoppe is here<\a>

    [[Your original is now fixed too - mod]]

    937:

    "My intent is never to dislike the person, just the ideas, but I'm subject to failings at frequent intervals."

    Likewise, though I seem to be subject to strange communication problems lately. It's most likely me, because I've had a couple of weeks where totally unrelated people responded to things I've said with incredulity or hostility. In some cases I saw it as suspicious defensiveness, but mostly just misunderstanding my posture and even the meaning of my comments. But when something keeps happening you must discount enemy action and consider that it's you.

    And I agree about the coffee, for what it's worth. I think all the arguments that the extra hot coffee is somehow 'normal' (and the whole premise behind the Stella Awards) are wrong headed and paternalistic (at best), representing in itself a fundamental misunderstanding about how people behave with each other. At worst they are a cynical manipulation and among the least savoury trends in our discourse.

    938:

    Note that method of preparation heavily influences "temperature after poured into mug".

    The five methods I've used to make coffee (ranked from least to most tasty) generate quite different temperatures, and I really should get around to actually measure them, at some point. In all cases, assume that 0,5l of coffee is poured into a ceramic mug with a 4mm wall, with the ceramic starting at 18-20 °C.

    • Drip maker: water dripping through funnel comes out at ~95°C, falls into coffee pot standing on a hot plate, from earlier observations, coffee in pot is at ~92 °C, only cooling is from the ceramic cup. Estimate 80-90 °C
    • Americano, using espresso machine; coffee is extracted using steam and exits at ~88 °C, topped up with near-boiling water; Estimate ~85°C
    • French press, see results from earlier
    • Kok-kaffe; bring a pot of water to a boil, add coarse-ground coffee, let simmer until done, serve. Estimated temperature of pot at serving is ~95 °C, only cooling is from the ceramic
    • Don Pedro: two-component maker, lower portion filled with water, steam pressure forcing water up into top compartment with coffee grounds; eventual relaxation of steam pressure sucking extracted coffee back down; estimated temperature at serving is ~95 &degC

    Perceived temperature from all but the French Press method is the same, it's WAY too hot to drink directly after pouring. The French Press is sippable straight off, but needs a while to be chuggable. Of these five methods, the only one I would strictly call an abomination is the americano.

    939:

    Re: 'National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF)'

    Thanks for the info!

    Looked up one of their industry PPTs - CUs do make some (small) business loans however personal loans account for most of their business and appear to be of much lower risk. As a sector, looks as though they're also providing more allowance for potential losses, i.e., covering their and their depositors's assets.

    https://www.ncua.gov/analysis/Pages/call-report-data/reports/chart-pack/chart-pack-2017-q3.pdf

    940:

    however personal loans account for most of their business and appear to be of much lower risk.

    It is sort of baked in. Credit Union members (you are not exactly a customer) have to have a common bond which creates the "union". Many (most?) were started for employees of a company or members of a union. Many have since broadened their charters[1] but many are still tied to a specific business entity. I'm a member of my wife's airline employer based credit union. Loan payments and savings are almost always payroll deducted which basically makes them first in line for all payments. This makes the risks much lower.

    [1]What used to be the IBM Coastal Federal Credit Union (or similar name) is now just Coastal Federal Credit Union. They are affiliated with 100s of smaller groups and it's easy to join one of these groups[2]. And thus get access to lower loan rates and higher savings returns.

    [2]My daughter is a member but I can't remember just what group she joined (at no cost or obligation) to be a member. My personal opinion is some of these groups exist just so you can be join the credit union.

    941:

    Here in Quebec, where we're all rabid socialists*, credit unions are important member-owned alternatives to the big banks. Inertia has been the main reason I've stuck with the same bank for 50-some years, but as my bank increasingly frustrates me due to its service fees, I'm increasingly looking toward jumping ship to a credit union. They get generally excellent ratings from members -- much better than most of the big banks.

    • In the comfy, non-threatening Canadian sense.
    942:

    I've got a similar check-list, which some people may have seen before: ( Iwas talking specifically about comminism at this point, but it may be genaralised ... the tests, if one cares to list them: 1] It has a “holy” book or books. 2] The words in those books may not be questioned, even when demonstrated proven wrong. 3] It has sub-divisions and sects and “heresy”, and heretics, in Trevor-Ropers phrase are “even wronger” than unbelievers. 4] Those sects fight each other, either by open warfare and/or in internal pogroms. 5] It is structurally based on, or similar to the RC church, complete with its own “holy office” 6] Which leads to the gulag, or similar outcomes – the communist equivalent of the churches years of penitence and autos-de-fé 7] Thousands if not millions are killed in the name of the “holy cause” to bring about a supposed millennium 8] It persecutes all the competing religions 9] In some sects it even denies Evolution by Natural Selection (look up Trofim Lysenko)

    943:

    THAT is an exact repeat of Brtish industrial gross mismanagement 1960 - 1990

    944:

    YES There was a very cynical saying doing the rounds then, that Scargill was a tosser in the pay of the CIA & the madwoman ditto, only in the pay of the KGB, given the rhetoric & loonie things both of them did .....

    945:

    Except that Hoppe is wrong, even by his own lights. ( Why is that not a suprise? ) Look at 18thC England, where property rights were deemed supreme ... And slavery - ownership of people was thrown out in 1772 .... And individual rights were supposedly guaranteed by the original Bill of Rights 1668-9.

    So, he's another lying fascist arsehole, oh dear.

    946:

    From what I remember of the course (it was back in the 1980s) the explanation/reason was that the jury felt sorry for the woman and felt MacDonalds could pay.

    From my memory of the explanation, a significant issue was that this particular Macdonald's restaurant was serving coffee well above the Macdonalds recommended temperature.

    If you're a guest in my home, and I hand you an insulated mug, I would (as a sensible host) make sure that you either had somewhere to put the mug down, or that the mug was sufficiently insulated to allow you to hold it comfortably. See also "passing the mug handle-first, so that you're the person going ouch rather than the recipient".

    If you're selling coffee at a drive-through, and you regularly hand someone a paper cup full of boiling liquid (IIRC over 90C in the case concerned), then the likelihood is high that at some point there will be a spillage. If the lid isn't fully on, or the cup isn't insulated, or the outside of the cup isn't grippy, then you are just asking for problems. If you receive complaints from lots of people that your sales behaviour has led to injury, and you don't take steps to mitigate the risk, then you are just asking for a lawsuit.

    947:

    I was somewhere last night where they have a brand new Keurig machine dispensing free coffee and hot chocolate. I had two cups of hot chocolate, which came out at 87° and 90°. Other than a small "Warning: contents may be hot" moulded into the lids for the disposable cups, there was no warning that the liquids were hot.

    Not trying to argue that this particular MacDonalds franchise (or the entire chain) was innocent. But I do worry about precedents being set and expanded out-of-context of the the original case. (An extreme example being the whole "corporations are people with full human rights" thing.)

    948:

    Yes, but it was worse than that. Not merely did she sell off much (most?) of our publicly-owned industry, with no tendering and at (secret) discounted rates, to USA corporations which eventually shut them down, she also (illegally) did much the same to our world-leading and profitable agricultural research. It's not fair to put ALL the blame on her, as those had been the objectives of the Department of Total Incompetence for some time, and it did and has done the same to most of our IT industry, both before and after her.

    949:

    Yeah ( mostly) look up "Rothamsted" for explanations ....

    950:

    Seriously, religion is a category largely invented by Christians in the Middle Ages.

    I wanted to follow up this point when I had time, partly because I think most people responding in this thread misunderstood it. It's an entirely non-controversial statement of cultural history. Many concepts and distinctions that we make are very definitely modern western concepts and distinctions. Some are part of how we deal with the world on an individual level so we're inclined to see them as obvious. The way we define "self" or a "person", for instance, is a modern western understanding of this concept[1]. And any external perspective[2] couldn't fail to note we're pretty inconsistent even with that one. "Nature" is another one, and even less consistent. But people often have difficulty with the idea that ideas have a cultural-historical location.

    It's troublesome because this leads to treating socially-accorded assumptions and prejudices as defaults and even as the null hypothesis. It's the same dynamic that applies when a theist questions onus and thinks an atheist must disprove the existence of their deity of choice, so you'd think people would know it better but apparently not.

    In any case, we know that for most people for most time, knowledge of entities like gods was intertwined with knowledge of the world around them - things we'd call nature, things we'd call technology, science and social science. It isn't that people thought the latter things were "religious" or that they even had much to do with their "religious" beliefs - they were just more things to know. The idea that these are different kinds of knowledge really is an important one, but recognising that this idea isn't universal, that's it's even relatively recent, is also important. There are straightforward factual things you simply won't understand without it.

    Classical Rome is a great example. The modern tendency is to regard it as an example of freedom of religion, that the Romans were by our standards remarkably tolerant of diverse religions. This is a misunderstanding of the way people thought about it at the time. Pratchett has a line about it in relation to beliefs in Discworld. What's the point in believing in god (which god do you mean anyway?) The gods exist whether you "believe" in them or not[3]. The more distance peoples we bring under the Pax Romana, the more gods we discover. They might only exist as ideas in the minds of their devotees, but that is enough to make a concrete impact in the world.

    And that leads me to the "religion is the root of evil" theme emerging above. Pratchett can help here too. Granny Weatherwax has a yardstick for evil, which she brings out when discussing religious believe. She regards it as coming up when you regard people as things. My offering on this topic is slightly different, though related. To me it is when you treat ideas as more important than people (though I might need a slightly broader than normal concept of people to make that work exactly as I'd like it). That ideas have, or more usually that a specific idea has, intrinsic value and that value outweighs any misery or murder wrought in its promotion and fulfillment.

    This is a consequentialist viewpoint. I could be wrong, but I have the impression that most modern westerns are consequentialists and even essentially utilitarians these days. There's an obvious complication - what if the idea itself promotes some social good which benefits people directly? Then it isn't the idea's intrinsic merit that is at stake, so a balance of the greater good is warranted. And the idea that some people are more worthy of being treated well than other people are - that's only an idea.

    Conrad has Marlow talk at great length about the idea of Empire, and how it justified huge sacrifices in lives. This was a real thing that people thought, still in Conrad's day. And it's obviously parallel to all sorts of ideas today.

    [1] The first four stanzas of Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats is as good a starting place as any for a depiction of the modern western concept of self.

    [2] Any Banksian super-entity in orbit above us with a name that's a colour and a space, for instance.

    [3] For the ones who'll pull me up on this sentence: of course they don't exist.

    951:

    After reviewing all the various viewpoints on the MacDonalds coffee lawsuit, I've got a simple conclusion:

    Yes. MacDonalds were at fault. But not specifically for serving the coffee too hot — you can't make coffee without the liquid at some point being dangerously hot.

    MacDonalds were at fault for serving coffee in a hazardous container; easily crushable between knees, entire lid had to be removed to permit drinking, etc.

    We all know that you can serve coffee in a flimsy waxed cardboard cup with no lid. Or you can serve it in a cardboard cup with a corrugated sleeve (for grip, reinforcement, and insulation) and a lock-down lid with some sort of opening for sipping it, and an egg-carton-like tray for holding two or more cups firmly upright. But the former option is cheaper.

    So my conclusion is MacDonalds were trying to maximize their profit margin at the expense of the customer's safety by using the cheapest practical containers.

    Final note: a couple of years later cup-holders turned out to be a wildly popular (and cheap) accessory and they're now ubiquitous in cars.

    952:

    It's the same dynamic that applies when a theist questions onus and thinks an atheist must disprove the existence of their deity of choice, so you'd think people would know it better but apparently not. At this, current time, most of the theists know perefctly well that they are asking the impossible, but would rather use some combination of: (a) Score cheap points from the ignorant, who do know no better ... (b) Gain time in the aregument to put further distractions into the "argument" ... (c) simply lie, anyway, & hope that they are not found out.

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