fredBuddemeyer

any way you slice it people are going to die and make grave errors. but open transactions between researchers and free human beings would have drugs evolving much faster than unaccountable and corruptible overlords. reputation systems could replace much of their most important functionality.

willfully stupid is a perfect description - of your government. had you opened the process to any kind of competitive process you would find your coffers filled. i did this work ages ago and paid several hundred dollars just for the right to pass each home.

the cable companies laugh at local governments, all the way to the bank.

exercising choice is exercising freedom. pleading for rights from entities that have seized them without your consent is truly depressing because it is hopeless.

its a very bad thing that bitcoin is subject to government control. very quickly it will be used to tax and arm in order to .. tax and arm and its potential to break that loop will be lost.

moralism is irrelevant in the face of producing simple intelligence. bet on it, prohibition is futile. it can serve good as well.

arrington needs friends in silicon valley a lot more than he needs your clicks. whatever you think of the man this is an honest and indignant post and it's an example of the courage he speaks of.

it is fascinating that this concept is so difficult for an otherwise intelligent community to grasp and a reminder of why we still need journalists.

because participating in a hopelessly corrupted system is demoralizing. "activism" brings at the very best a delay followed by a shady deal as soon as your back is turned.

viva btc

inspiration produces better everything (software) than lucre but if you wanna talk $ rewards its obvious theres a mass market for privacy developing.

the best part will be enforcement; each state can create an air force to protect us from such potential threats.

perhaps but the real prize for an authoritarian is just this kind of fear.

and when we wake up we go nuclear on innocents

step 1 fear mongering like this step 2 an attack that makes good headlines step 3 legislation requiring registration of computers (pick a means)

if a politician can be described in such terms at the end of a career (in no less a house of "compromise" than the us congress) his accomplishments are not over.

does anyone have any ideas on what we could do to help this person?

by fighting the war on drugs these traitors are advancing terrorism! by countering terrorsim these scoundrels divert precious resources from the the nation's war on drugs!

whats needed is another agency to resolve this conflict.

perhaps paul's intuition is right - there is something wrong here. certainly real world business success is not so binary as this.

if there is a 500 pound supposition in the room it's liquidity. if the only way an investor can achieve it is through a massive "event" such as an ipo or sell out then any otherwise successful company is a non-entity for investors.

if y combinator were holding securities with some liquidity it needn't devolve into a 20th century vc. there are many ways to achieve this, all disruptive yet also quite well suited for this institution and its community.

i must wonder how many here realize what the aspirations of an ipo or even a corporate investment mean in this age. so many of us are working for what we disdain - without even realizing it. yet we are the same people that can make the most difference - if we see our responsibilities in a future determined by technological opportunity.

naturally cuban thinks baiting suckers is a winning tactic, it describes his own success at taking yahoo's billion dollars for a company that didn't really exist. but note it also describes his string of tech failures ever since.

if you're trying to help this guy tell him what your browser, os, and screen resolution are.

if you're trying to stifle those that would make contributions to this community then keep doing what you are doing.

0 marginal cost goods and organized, free labor test the foundations of capitalism and necessitate the development of new institutions. this project adresses both of these - and the economic possibilities of patronage/tipping. why the hell not?

millions of honest people around the world that have lost their savings when a fiat currency changed its valuation for political reasons. you do not need to be a zealot to appreciate any attempt to create a free currency; you simply need to have a small sense of history and the world around you.

oh dear indeed. if you dont have the courage to even sign in, you never will know now will you?

if instead you speculate and fear monger, well, then you are just what we are trying to counteract in this society; what you've expressed is exactly what allows authoritarianism.

the advice in taxKilla is legal and we dont maintain any customer lists.

during the ows protests it dawned on me that citizens shouldn't camp outside of buildings hoping to influence those inside; they actually hold the money/power and just don't see it.

so as a side project we made taxKilla to counteract the root of government power and systemic corruption: taxes. it's a simple, line by line guide to using an independent entity to control your taxes.

it's legal, free, and is a particularly good fit for hackers that perform independent contract work; i hope some of you can enjoy it this year.

is there any evidence that the loss of privacy is more than the gains we share from being open and sharing? is there any reason to believe that even such thoughtful posts about privacy will not look quaint and absurd in a couple of years? a loss in privacy is a gain in openness and understanding and thats why real (and much more often) hypothetical horrors aside it is an intrinsic and evolutionary trend for humanity.

its not just the pigs in animal farm that turned into the wicked rulers they ousted so justly; on many levels it is every group that ever successfully revolted. one of the earliest steps into the dark is using the tactics of the enemy.

no doubt there are successful lobbies that havent made the deals that render them useless. but playing the game is not the tactic that is working and inspiring people anymore; it is the hope of something more transcending emerging from new networks we build and connect with every day.

i hope this is not the case here but the prospect of getting a few minutes to talk in between a pig's meals isn't so appetizing.

historically true but coding is a much different pursuit than it was a generation ago. the population of programmers is changing from the legacy of i.t. department hermits towards people coding the internet as a means of self expression. as the net becomes indistinguishable from society itself this inevitably leads to politics.

our companies bigredwire and littleBiggy are 100% remote worker based. the only person left in our office is the accountant who just seems to like it better. a cupla observations:

set meeting times are a substitute for proximity. and audio works better than video. instant messaging is perfect for the times in-between as it creates a presence and has a very flexible protocol between users.

asynchronous development is very, very helpful. dependencies between people that are physically separated is considerably more difficult. this is a tough one to learn but brings its own strengths.

not only do we hire contractors from all over the world but even our full time employees are able to live "in orbit", moving around the planet with the freedom of backpackers. they are tied only to their computer.

freedom is a substitute for pay. once you get to a certain point of income you prefer freedom. i dont know anyone here that could go back to the world of offices; it seems so involuntary, like indentured servitude.

selling a country's freedom? un-american? its hard to even conceive what on earth this means or how your consideration of what is american - or treason - means anything. and adidas is german.

given two competing anythings the one that plays most aggressively wins in the short run (see ww2) but these tactics usually turn out to be short lived crutches. the path of user choice and openness (which starts with emptiness) is not going to win an a/b test but in the long run is likely to win the war. and its going to force you to come up with something genuinely compelling.

what does respect for the user have to do with biz dev? if you want to connect with another system (human or machine) you accomodate it.

hmmm how bout we patent the act of patent trolling and then sue the trolls for infringement.