rkbabang

I wouldn't say Prime subscription "is" Amazon's business model, but it certainly is a part of it. Amazon has a multifaceted approach to what it is doing. In its retail operations Prime is a large focus (not "the" focus, but "a" focus). But there is also AWS which is a different beast entirely.

Personally, I don't think the feds really know what to make of cryptocurrencies yet. It looks like they are watching to see what happens. I'm actually surprised they haven't tried to either ban it outright and/or create their own "FedCoin" which would be "legal tender" on par with the dollar where they would control the blockchain and be able to inflate it at will. It is too late now however, just like the mass-adoption of the web, it caught them by surprise and they can't really control it.

Amazon is trying to build its Prime membership program adding more and more benefits to it to get more and more people to join. Right now I use the free shipping, but also the video, prime music, the storage space on Amazon Drive, ... Maybe it is closer to Costco in this way than Walmart?

My assumption that Coinbase would only support one side of any Bitcoin fork was correct. Here is the official position: https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with-bitcoin-stored-on-coinbase-99e2d4790a53 "customers with Bitcoin stored on Coinbase will only have access to the current version of bitcoin we support (BTC). Customers will not have access to, or be able to withdraw, bitcoin cash (BCC). Customers who wish to access both bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) need to withdraw bitcoin stored on Coinbase before 11.59 pm PT July 31, 2017. If you do not wish to access bitcoin cash (BCC) then no action is required."

The question wasn't who should take credit for it in the mind of the public, it was what will actually cause the next 25% drop. Presidents take credit for and get blamed for things they have nothing to do with all the time, that isn't really an interesting discussion.

If anyone is holding Bitcoin at Coinbase, an exchange, or with some other 3rd party system where you don't control your keys. You might want to transfer it to a wallet which you control the private keys before August 1st, this way in the case of a hard fork you will end up holding an equal amount of both coins. If you hold Bitcoin in Coinbase you will most likely not get any Bitcoin Cash (BCC). You can always transfer BTC right back into coinbase afterwards if that is where you want to hold it. https://news.bitcoin.com/what-every-bitcoiner-should-know-about-bitcoin-cash/

I agree. I read it earlier this year. It is an excellent book that makes you think. If you haven't read "What Technology Wants" by him it is also excellent. He takes an evolutionary view of technical progress which is fascinating to read when he lays it all out. It makes you look at the past and the future in a different way. It is really the prequel to "The Inevitable".

If alphabay was actively engaged in the promotion and distribution of malware and identity theft as you say then I will concede that you are correct. If they simply setup an anonymous marketplace and didn't police it, then I will stick by my previous statements. I do think a getaway driver is just as guilty as the one who pulls the trigger.

I'd love to. Unfortunately my balances are somewhat lower. :( On the bright side though, I still have mine. :) What a tragic story though. Since I don't think any object or substance should be illegal, I don't think he did anything wrong. Quite the opposite, he provided a way for people to safely buy what they wanted without the dangers of dealing in person with shady and possibly dangerous characters. In short he put his own life and freedom on the line everyday, not only to profit, but to save lives as well. If this guy was anything he was a hero. In other words the exact opposite of people for whom my disdain couldn't be greater, like Jeff Sessions and others involved in taking him out. Yes, what will you do without the ability to easily commit identity and financial frauds on a massive scale? You're going to have to find a new marketplace to buy and sell the financial records of >100k innocent people and malware to procure more. As you said, I'm sure hackers and fraudsters will die without the ability to anonymously buy/sell malware. /s That's a small part of what went on there. That's like saying craigslist is bad because stolen goods are sometimes sold there. The people creating and using malware are doing something wrong, not the person running an online marketplace where things can be bought and sold. If someone finds a hitman on craigslist and pays him in cash does that mean Craigslist and the US Dollar are to blame? That is the same kind of thinking that says if someone is stabbed you blame the company who made the knife and the retailer who sold the knife rather than the person who actually committed murder. If Craigslist is actively aware of hitmen advertising themselves on Craigslist and continue to make their platform available to said hitmen then they are bad and their management should be imprisoned. Craigslist would be actively facilitating murder for hire. Are you under the impression that Craigslist actively facilitates this and would refuse to comply with authorities if hitmen classifieds are found on their site? This is insane. I'm not saying that Craigslist actively facilitates this, but let's just say compared to say ebay or Amazon, it is a lot easier to fence stolen goods, or advertize sex for hire, or even something as extreme as a hitman for hire, on Craigslist. I'm not saying that Craigslist should change, or that they are liable, I'm just saying that there are things they could do and they don't.

I'd love to. Unfortunately my balances are somewhat lower. :( On the bright side though, I still have mine. :) What a tragic story though. Since I don't think any object or substance should be illegal, I don't think he did anything wrong. Quite the opposite, he provided a way for people to safely buy what they wanted without the dangers of dealing in person with shady and possibly dangerous characters. In short he put his own life and freedom on the line everyday, not only to profit, but to save lives as well. If this guy was anything he was a hero. In other words the exact opposite of people for whom my disdain couldn't be greater, like Jeff Sessions and others involved in taking him out. Yes, what will you do without the ability to easily commit identity and financial frauds on a massive scale? You're going to have to find a new marketplace to buy and sell the financial records of >100k innocent people and malware to procure more. As you said, I'm sure hackers and fraudsters will die without the ability to anonymously buy/sell malware. /s That's a small part of what went on there. That's like saying craigslist is bad because stolen goods are sometimes sold there. The people creating and using malware are doing something wrong, not the person running an online marketplace where things can be bought and sold. If someone finds a hitman on craigslist and pays him in cash does that mean Craigslist and the US Dollar are to blame? That is the same kind of thinking that says if someone is stabbed you blame the company who made the knife and the retailer who sold the knife rather than the person who actually committed murder.

I'd love to. Unfortunately my balances are somewhat lower. :( On the bright side though, I still have mine. :) What a tragic story though. Since I don't think any object or substance should be illegal, I don't think he did anything wrong. Quite the opposite, he provided a way for people to safely buy what they wanted without the dangers of dealing in person with shady and possibly dangerous characters. In short he put his own life and freedom on the line everyday, not only to profit, but to save lives as well. If this guy was anything he was a hero. In other words the exact opposite of people for whom my disdain couldn't be greater, like Jeff Sessions and others involved in taking him out.

Is that true though? I thought Circuit City went bankrupt long before Radio Shack. In fact unless I'm remembering incorrectly Best Buy had more to do with killing Circuit City than Amazon.

I find I order them just in case. Last time my breaks started making noise, I just ordered all 4 rotors and all 4 sets of pads on Amazon. Some of the pads had some meat on them still, but I just replaced them anyway.

From: https://www.xbt.eu/ "BIP91 LOCKED-IN 267 blocks until rejecting non-SegWit blocks."

It's looking like 80%+ of the bitcoin miners are already signaling support for the BIP91 proposal. https://www.xbt.eu/ Good brief summary of the possible timelines here: UASF/Segwit2x Scenarios and Timelines

I also time-travelled back to the 1800s and tried to buy bitcoin, but the Amsterdam folks were all talking tulips to me... Oh wait... NVM. 8) ;) I recently read someone saying that "If you bought bitcoin stock 10 years ago it would be worth a fortune today".

I also think that is the reason for the volatility. The reason I'm buying some now is that if all goes well the price will probably bump right back up without giving you the opportunity to purchase even at current prices. Markets fall on uncertainty which is what we are seeing now. Of course if things don't go well with many people choosing to keep the original blockchain alive BTC could split into two like ETH/ETC and prices may fall even further. This could be an opportunity as well. After the etherium hardfork I was able to convert my ETC into ETH to increase my ETH holdings. It should be interesting to follow anyway.

While BTC maybe a 'currency' it is like a nano-cap currency. The vast majority of people on earth have never heard of it, the vast majority of those who have heard of it have no idea how to acquire or use it, and the vast majority who do know how to acquire it are holding it or trading it for speculation purposes. It isn't functioning as a currency for the most part yet, so wild price swings are pretty much inevitable. That goes double for ETH as it is accepted as currency even less often. There are Bitcoin ATMs and businesses which accept Bitcoin, not so much for ETH yet. Couple that with the fact that most "investors" have no prior investing experience and panic at the first sight of a down tick in price and, yeah, it's going to be a rollercoaster for a while.

I haven't been trading, but for the first time in more than a year I've started buying again. I've been buying more BTC, because I already own 3x more ETH than BTC (in $US value). There's not a whole hell of a lot to buy in the stock market right now, so some new money is going into BTC presently.

Are you talking about current storage or future theoretical storage? Because your examples seem a little stretched to me. 124GB growing 100x is 12.4TB, which is more than what most people have available at home, so I wouldn't say it's "easy for anyone to keep a copy". 124GB growth 1000x is 124TB, which is definitely out of reach of any normal person right now, so I wouldn't say "it wouldn't be much of a problem to keep at home"... Even at the sweet spot of a 4TB HDD, that's 31 hard-drives, or about $4,000 of HDDs, plus the NAS enclosures, plus probably redundancy, which is many other thousands depending on the RAID scheme. So we're probably talking about close to the price of a small car just to store a 1000x larger blockchain. As for a million times bigger than 124GB, that's definitely not that easy to keep a bunch of distributed copies among miners everywhere with anything close to current technology. Maybe I misread, or misunderstood what you said, but I was thinking that the multiples of 124GB you were talking about didn't seem that small to me. Maybe you were thinking about theoretical future storage capabilities... 12TB is certainly in reach of any home user today. You can buy 16TB of drives for $500 or 24TB for under $800. Most motherboards can support 2-3 extra drives, but if you want a NAS you can get a 4 bay NAS for $200-$300. 124TB is out of reach right now for home users, but it won't be by the time the blockchain gets that big. And 124TB is easily and relatively cheaply available to large multimillion dollar mining operations right now. A million times larger than 124GB is 124PB which will be in reach for large operations long before the blockchain gets anywhere even remotely near that size. I think you underestimate how quickly storage capacity grows now, and especially how quickly it could grow if there was some huge demand driving the market far in excess of what's required today. EDIT: Of course I was talking about a theoretical future, because in todays know reality you can hold the entire blockchain on a thumb drive for $40.

I'm still in Bedford, New Hampshire. Same as when this topic was first started. I've lived a bunch of different places in southern MA, central MA, and now southern NH, but I've never in my life lived further than 60 miles or so from Boston. If you put a pin in the map in downtown Boston and drew a 60 mile radius circle, a bunch of places inside that circle is where I'm from. EDIT: I just found a site where you can easily do this. Pretty cool. This is from: https://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?size=600x500&path=fillcolor:0x00FF00%7Cweight:1%7Ccolor:0xFFFFFF%7Cenc:qdyfGpatpLdLw~Npf@i%7CNt%60AgwNpzA%7BoN%7CsBafNvlCwyMzdDgkMd%7CDozLrrEogL~gFqrKd%7CFo%7BJdoGwbJz%60HchIbqH_lH%7C_IknGbmImoFtxIgoEpbJcnDvjJelCbqJmiBvuJgfAnxJwb@jyJ?nxJvb@vuJffAbqJliBvjJdlCpbJbnDtxIfoEbmIloF%7C_IjnGbqH~kHz%60HbhIdoGvbJf%7CFn%7BJ%7CgFprKrrEngLd%7CDnzLzdDfkMvlCvyM%7CsB%60fNpzAzoNt%60AfwNpf@h%7CNdLv~NeLv~Nqf@f%7CNu%60AhwNqzAzoN%7DsB~eNwlCxyM%7BdDfkMe%7CDnzLsrEngL%7DgFnrKg%7CFp%7BJeoGvbJ%7B%60HbhIcqH~kH%7D_IjnGcmIjoFuxIhoEqbJbnDwjJblCcqJniBwuJffAoxJvb@kyJ?oxJwb@wuJgfAcqJoiBwjJclCqbJcnDuxIioEcmIkoF%7D_IknGcqH_lH%7B%60HchIeoGwbJe%7CFq%7BJ_hForKsrEogLe%7CDozL%7BdDgkMwlCyyM%7DsB_fNqzA%7BoNu%60AiwNqf@g%7CNeLw~N

While it is true that the ledger size is open ended, at any given time the ledger size is finite and will always be finite. There is no such thing as an infinite sized ledger. The bitcoin blockchain is currently 124GB (it would fit on a USB stick). That is tiny, it could grow 100X and it would still be easy for anyone to keep a copy of it. Even if it were to grow 1000X it wouldn't be much of a problem to keep at home. If it were to grow a million times it wouldn't be much of a problem for miners to keep a copy of it (and probably not home users either by the time it does get that big). To put 124GB in proportion to the amount of storage in the world from wikipedia (keep in mind that 1 petabyte = 1,000,000 GB: Games: World of Warcraft uses 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game Steam, a digital distribution service, delivers over 16 petabytes of content to American users weekly Cloud backup: Multiple backup vendors, including Code42, Backblaze, and Mozy claim to store 90 or more petabytes of user backup data Physics: The experiments in the Large Hadron Collider produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which are distributed over the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.[26] In July 2012 it was revealed that CERN amassed about 200 petabytes of data from the more than 800 trillion collisions looking for the Higgs boson Climate science: The German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) has a storage capacity of 60 petabytes of climate data Folding@home (Scientific Data): Folding@home has generated 0.5 petabytes of simulated data Google Photos has an estimated of 13.7 petabytes worth of photos uploaded in the first year of its existence The storage capacity of the world right now is measured in zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 1,000,000 petabytes), and it is doubling every 1-3 years. Blockchains would have to grow at an enormous rate for a long-long time before storage would be an issue. And if it did become an issue someday that would push innovation and start to drive the storage industry the way mining (and AI as well) is going to start to drive the GPU industry. There won't be a shortage for long as NVIDIA, AMD, and others will ramp up production to try and meet demand. There are already GPU cards coming out specifically designed for mining. And bitcoin, of course isn't even mined with GPUs anymore, but custom chips specifically designed to mine bitcoins.

Right now it almost certainly does. The bullish case is that the costs will come down over time (i.e. computing, electricity, storage) while the benefits will increase over time as more applications for this are found and become widely used. If either of those assumptions doesn't turn out to be true then there is nothing to see here but a big tulip bubble. I'm stepping way out of my knowledge zone here, but isn't the security of blockchain based on high cost? I.e. isn't it by design based on hard (and also useless - which makes this doubly waste) problems to solve? Maybe there are solutions for blockchain that don't require the above while it still remains blockchain. My suspicion is that solutions just make it not-blockchain-that-is-still-called-blockchain-for-sales/marketing-easy-money. But I might be totally wrong. 8) Proof of stake solves the computing and electricity costs. And storage prices are always going down. For a currency you might still want proof of work, so you are correct that the computing costs will still be high the question is the value going to be worth the price? For something like Etherium where the currency isn't the main app proof of stake should solve the computing/electricity problem (etherium will be moving to some form of modified PoS in the next year or so). There is always a question of the value being worth the cost in everything isn't there? Is the value of the capital markets worth the cost of being a public company? For some yes, for others no. There will be a lot of stuff created and a lot of failures along the way, but I think blockchain tech will find its killer app, and then another one, and then another one, etc... over time. This may happen on the bitcoin or etherium blockchains or some other one that won't even be invented yet until 2028. I'm not going to say I know how this will play out. How many internet companies are no longer with us? How many computer companies? How many automobile companies? Markets are messy, but that doesn't mean this entire category of technology is sure to be worthless now and forever.

Right now it almost certainly does. The bullish case is that the costs will come down over time (i.e. computing, electricity, storage) while the benefits will increase over time as more applications for this are found and become widely used. If either of those assumptions doesn't turn out to be true then there is nothing to see here but a big tulip bubble.

Why do some of you get so angry about this topic. Is it not true that there are few female investors (either professional or otherwise)? Yes there are some brilliant women in every field, but that isn't the point. I've worked with some brilliant female engineers, but I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit that there are few female silicon design engineers. There are few female truck drivers as well. However you'd like the world to work aside, simply saying these things is not misogynistic if it is true. EDIT: A few weeks ago my wife and I went on a tour of a 2 year school my son is considering going to before moving on to a 4 year school. Anyway, the tour took us through every building on campus. When we got to the dental hygienist building they had a class picture of every graduating class in the dental hygienist program from the opening of the school in 1964 until last years class. I'd say about 40 people in each photo. The tour guide pointed out that if you are looking for a male graduate there was one in 2012 and none in any other year. Was this anti-male of him to point out?