Posts by Finder Keeper

Europe plans special tax for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon

Re: I wonder....

> If Amazon prices have to go up, then good, because they are artificially low right now.

Found the central planner?

Borked bog forces flight carrying 83 plumbers to bug out back to base

I'm trying to block the temptation to pipe in on this... er... thread. Really trying!

Man: Just 18 Bitcoin babies and my home is yours

Re: What I don't understand...

Many stores do accept bitcons. There are exchanges (e.g. coinfloor, kraken, bitstamp, coinbase, gemini) which let users buy and sell bitcoins for fiat.

Re: "Today, that single bitcoin is valued upwards of $2,200, Fortune noted in March."

I own bitcoins and I want them to go up in value. However, I tell people NOT to invest in it as it is an extremely risky and volatile asset. I would very much prefer the value of bitcoin to rise due to its increased use in commerce. This is low risk because a seller can accept bitcoins and immediately convert them into fiat. In other words, it is better to increase the value of money by increasing its velocity (which is what happens when people spend bitcoin) rather than decreasing the amount in circulation (which is what happens when people hoard bitcoins).

You heard right: Huawei's making phones in Chennai

Re: Great thing about a race to the bottom on workers pay

A more charitable explanation might be that the previously poor bastard is now a rich bastard and doesn't want to do the poor bastard's job any more.

EU waves antitrust claims in Google's face, snarls 'You want some?'

I wonder what will happen first - the EU breaking up Google, or the EU breaking itself up...

Grab a pick: Space mining's the next generation gold rush

Re: grab a pick? not if you want to get rich

> ... if mining asteroids can be done economically at all

I don't think the bulk of the minerals will be shipped to the earth. Sure, if there are rare materials like platinum maybe, but I think the killer app for asteroid mining will be as supply stations for space missions. Comets with their ice would be more useful as fuel, but rocky asteroids could also be used as dead mass for magnetic/ionic propulsion, gravity assist sacrificial mass etc.

Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens

Re: Swiss efficiency

You cannot count investments as "money the UK gets back from the EU," unless those are funds coming directly out of the EU budget. Investments by private corporations may benefit from EU membership, but are not a direct result of it.

A lot of foreign investments in developed countries come from other countries. That is a benefit of free trade (eg EFTA/WTO, bilateral agreements) rather than any transnational government.

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

Basic economics?

It seems to me (or maybe I just wasn't paying attention during ECON 101) that all things being equal, increasing demand should increase prices, not decrease them.

I suspect that prices are falling because technology is improving, more producers are jumping in, and economies of scale are kicking in. Or maybe even that the LED bulbs subsidized by the Indian government are finding their way back into the market and competing with non-subsidized sales.

Alphabetti spaghetti: What Wall Street isn't telling you about Google

Re: How Great Minds Occupy Themselves.

Either Elon Musk has a tendency to indulge in a false dichotomy, or he is a megalomaniac.

BTC dev: 'Strangling' the blockchain will kill Bitcoin

Re: It's a pyramid scheme by design

Banks (as well as individuals) will only hold bitcoins if they think those bitcoins are valuable, and are likely to be even more valuable in the future.

Bitcoins exist only as entries on a globally distributed ledger (the blockchain), backed only by the willingness of the network to maintain the integrity of said ledger. They have no "intrinsic" value. The only reason the network is willing to spend resources to maintain the blockchain is because bitcoin users accept bitcoin in exchange for goods and services. These users do so because they have confidence in the decentralized, peer-to-peer, permissionless, uncounterfeitable, irreversible, near-instant, nearly free transactions that the blockchain enables.

So, if bitcoin were ever to become unusable, it will lose value by that very fact. Even if we were to accept your premise that hoarding makes bitcoin unusable (it doesn't), then the hoarders will sell as bitcoin loses value, and there will be more in circulation again, and it will be valuable again.

How to build the next $1bn tech unicorn: Get into ransomware

Ground-based capture mechanism?

I think the mechanism for extending and locking the legs is complicated, and could be replaced with a ground-based capture mechanism. A fighter plane landing on a carrier relies on a hook and wire, and it's travelling a lot faster (vertically as well as horizontally) than this rocket. Why doesn't Space-X use a set of robotic arms on movable platforms that surround the landing point? As the rocket nears the ground and slows its descent, these platforms could approach it from all sides, with a series of arms extended, and gently stabilize the rocket as it touches down and cuts its engines.

Even a set of cables could be used, parallel to the ground, at different heights and different angles relative to each other, closing in on the rocket so that it cannot fall over after landing.

> How much use is Bitcoin getting for purposes other than ransomware and drug deals?

It's hard to estimate, given the pseudonymous nature of bitcoins. We know the addresses that the coins are flowing through, but in most cases we don't know who those addresses belong to.

Having said that, I personally pay for home-delivered food using bitcoins on lieferservice.ch and have used bitcoins to pay for coffee and computers.

The Raspberry Pi is succeeding in ways its makers almost imagined

Re: I'm waiting

How about a 3D printer then? That and sketchup ought to get him started.

If new NetApp CEO George Kurian has a plan it's under his hat

Prank

I would like to see him switch offices with brother Thomas over at Oracle one day.

Hurrah! Uber does work (in the broadest sense of the word) after all

Re: Actually works

If the regulations pertaining to what's a taxi dispatch service and what's not goes too far, the market will evolve a completely decentralized peer-to-peer matching service similar to OpenBazaar.

Alternatively, uber will be replaced by a craigslist-like listing service with free-speech safe harbor protections, and a paypal-like payment processing system, both with APIs that allow an umbrella app that can make the end result look exactly like the uber app frrom the users' perspective.

Indian DEITY plans 14 Exabyte cloud storage rig

Re: Wonderful!

A. It's actually far cheaper to provision 1 GB per person than a year's worth of water or sanitation for that same person.

B. It is quite possible that when people have access to the government, and vice-versa, that some of these services could be prioritized more efficiently.

Foxconn's going to 'exploit' Indian labour? SCORE! Bye, poverty

Re: OK, then...

Ok, so Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim walk in.

Android Bitcoin wallet Blockchain was briefly borked

Re: So this

No, this is a broken wallet that some company made to hold the currency of the future.

\

Re: Who, in their right mind ...

More and more people every day. With Greece about to get Cyprussed, cash being made illegal in France and increasingly in the US, bitcoin is looking like a better choice. Even NASDAQ has said that they are looking into using bitcoin for recording securities transactions on bitcoin's instant, open, peer-to-peer trustless ledger (the blockchain).

Google's Cardboard 2.0 virtual reality device is a triumph for humanity, said no one sane, ever

Re: Desperation...

This again! Google doesn't actually sell your data, and its flagship Chrome browser comes with incognito mode built in.

Challenge: If you're actually able to show me how to buy anyone's personal information from Google, I'll send you 235 USD (or 1 bitcoin).

Re: Google is always ahead of the curve...

Impressive, but I couldn't tell if it was able to pan 360 degrees using head motion the way cardboard is able to do using the phone's accelerometer, compass etc.

Dissing the Valley and ignoring unicorns: The tech boom Oakland style

Re: Oakland actaully pushing the same ground as always

That real rain is called gentrification. And it's a comin'

Ransomware crims drop Bitcoin faster than Google axes services

You need to verify that you can restore from backups when the need arises. Before you have accumulated any critical data (or on an identical test-only platform), induce a hard crash by wiping or removing the drive, then make sure that you can restore it from backups.

Without this, backups are useless.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Chana masala

For a nice variation in taste, add half a cup of grated coconut to the stir-fry onions and garlic. Continue frying until the coconut turns slightly brown.

Watchdog slaps American Apparel's youthful naked arse

All of you readers in Britain who researched said image (for academic purposes, naturally), are now criminals for viewing sexual images of a person who is 20 but appears to be 16. Congratulations.

Bitcoin trade biz MyCoin goes dark, investors fear $387 MEEELLION lost

Old fashioned Ponzi - nothing specifically about bitcoin

The scheme promised to "invest" punters' money in bitcoins. There were no actual bitcoins involved, as far as I can see. They could have said bamboo plantations instead of bitcoins and it would have "worked" exactly the same.

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

Speed 2

Never gets out of 2nd gear.

'I went from a two-hour commute to a 10-min scooter ride by the sea'

Apparently there are no personal income taxes in Bermuda. Assuming the salary remains the same, wouldn't the income tax cover the higher cost of living?

Europe prepares to INVADE comet: Rosetta landing site chosen

A little nudge from that Philae craft is all it will take to put this comet on a collision course with the earth. You heard it here first.

SanDisk's record-busting 512GB SD CARD will fit perfectly in your empty wallet

It's a bad idea to use one of these cards by itself for storage. If it becomes corrupted, you lose a whole bunch of data at once. I wonder why most cameras don't support dual mirrored card slots. If your use case depends on a high end camera and a big SD card, surely you need live data replication as well.