brndnmtthws

I think a lot of people in the US still have a strong sense of patriotism/nationalism. Nationalism is a trick dictators/tyrants/corrupt govs have used for decades to control people.

The senate has an excellent track record for protecting the corporate elite, not the broad constituency.

There are only 100 seats in the US senate. How can 'we' participate in that? There are somewhere around 330 million people in the US, represented by just 100 people, who mostly act in their own self interest. How can one person properly represent on average ~3.3 million people?

What a sham.

I checked my calendar and it would appear the current year is 2018.

You may be confused about the use of the term "free" in this context. It isn't about giving stuff away for $0 in compensation, it's about freedom in the sense of liberty and freedom to modify software you own.

RMS is possibly considering renaming it, too: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7t97sn/fsf_foundatio...

It's a shame that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and others who have benefited so much from the work of organizations like the FSF don't pony up. These companies are notably absent from the current list of patrons[1].

[1]: https://www.fsf.org/patrons

Do what brings you joy in every day.

I suggest you read the white paper if you're interested: https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pd...

A good book to read for anyone interested in economics is called "The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy", by Mervyn King, who was head of the Bank of England for about 10 years and during the financial crises of 2007-8. In the book, he discusses "the alchemy of money" which he roughly defines as how money isn't necessarily backed by any tangible assets. A lot of what happens in the banking system is pure alchemy. A fascinating read IMO.

Your opinion is irrelevant. The market has the last word, and the market has already decided Bitcoin is the most valuable and useful. You can verify this by looking at hash rate, market cap, and distribution (amongst other things). You may not like it, so feel free to downvote me, but the facts are indisputable.

Not necessarily. There are also some coins which use methods of securing the network which don't require incentives (ex: RaiBlocks).

Unfortunately I think that's where we're headed. They will copy the tech, call it "crypto", and now they're in the cool kids club.

Bitcoin, however, will remain king because it's the first (Lindy effect) and it still offers more than any of the clones.

How does this compare to something like Jekyll? Is the only difference that this is written in Python and Jekyll is Ruby?

It is indeed true; the winners always earn the privilege of defining morality and rewriting history to their liking.

Edit: *what's to stop

Something tells me this battle isn't over. What's stop stop Trump from issuing another executive order that reinstates the tariffs? That's what he's been doing in a battle with the supreme courts on his Muslim ban for the past year.

Excuse me for not confirming your biases. I will, however, continue to think freely as I choose. I don't care much for echo chambers. If that does not work for you, please do ban me.

Resources are scarce, and until we live in Star Trek where we can magically replicate anything, there will be no free lunches.

It's not easy but it can be done. The US is a nation of immigrants. Unless you're native American, you either emigrated here or descended from someone who did.

It turns out hard things are hard. There's no free lunch or get rich easy schemes.

I'm an immigrant (I was completely broke when I moved to the US) and my parents were immigrants and their parents were immigrants.

Skills aren't handed out, you acquire them by learning which is something you can only do for yourself.

Anyone can. You and your preconceived notions are the only barriers.

If they felt that way they'd just contribute to Bitcoin.

Convenient timing to pump this coin. Seems like Stripe is getting their ducks in a row so they can cash in on their altcoin.

Has anyone else noticed that there is no documentation about withdrawing funds? It looks like you can only buy and hold within the app.

Seems a bit pointless unless you're strictly interested in day trading and don't actually care about crypto.

If this is true, that means these are cash settled and they might not actually be backed by any assets. That idea is scary and I would avoid it.

Spot on. There's nothing quite like going to a very different place you've never been, though. I'm not sure how else to get that feeling without actually doing it.

I'm partly in agreement with you, but my point of view is that the 'good guys', so to speak, are working at Google, Apple, Facebook, etc, and are incentivized to protect their customers rather than assist the government (except, y'know, in cases where they got caught working with the gov).

If most of the talented folks are working in the private sector, it seems logical to conclude that no corrupt organization can 'hack' the privacy protections that are in place. Or at the very least, they're a lot less capable of doing so.

The pen is mightier than the sword, and corrupt political organizations will be left with nothing but a sword in the end. And that may eventually become useless, too.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Any person or organization which contributes, aids, or abets in spying on individuals for political reasons is entirely corrupt in my opinion.

Aside from some research that the NSA has contributed to humanity, they have done little good based on the evidence I've seen.

It's mostly anecdotes and personal experience. I think that data on salaries, etc, is mostly public too, so you can probably see for yourself that they aren't competitive with SV or Wall St.

I've worked directly with people in the IC, and I have friends who've worked (or currently work) at various government agencies.

Fortunately these government agencies are mostly corrupt, dysfunctional, and unable to recruit talent, so we probably don't have much to worry about.