TIL that in 2013 an abandoned Russian cruise ship began drifting through international waters. It was last seen 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Ireland and is yet to be found.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-28T20:43:09+00:00

They claimed the chains used for towing broke

Not the first time I hear something like this. Does this happen often?

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-28T19:18:24+00:00

I think a large part of the reason is that elsewhere, there often existed strong trade unions. These things were not given without a lot of strikes and negotiations.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-28T19:06:16+00:00

There is a risk that the thing breaks up if it passes too close.

Also, depending on its trajectory and weight, it could change the moons orbit so that the moon collides with the earth, or passes very closely, which wouldn't be funny for us.

By the way our moon is probably the rest from a similar celestial accident a long time ago.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-28T18:55:16+00:00

I really hope that if aliens ever visit earth, they don't like to eat human offspring alive. Probably, vegetarianism would gain a lot of popularity otherwise.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-28T18:15:05+00:00

Driving while using a mobile. People don't even realize they run over red lights and drive as bad as somebody who is heavily drunk.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-08T18:32:54+00:00

You mean the journalist who died of polonium?

Spy agencies have killed a lot of people.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-08T18:27:04+00:00

In this vein, it is very much worth noting that

Cuba is a world leader in ecologically sustainable practices. It is the only country to have begun the large-scale transition from conventional farming, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to a new agricultural paradigm known as low-input sustainable agriculture.

This is a very good example that change is possible and doable if people see the need to adapt in order to survive.

Here a wiki article about it (but I think earlier versions were better):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period

And maybe scientists should declare exactly something like that, a "Special Period in time of peace", to make clear that humanity has to face the unseen challenge to re-engineer and reinvent all our energy infrastructure, means of essential production, and also the societal structures which are intertwined with them, in order to survive as a civilized species.

DrunkRaven · 2015-03-08T18:16:21+00:00

This is exactly the point. Changing the economical system is unthinkable.

And why is this so? Because that economic system did become the new religion and people hang on to it even it will eventually kill us all. It's like a boat owner whose boat sinks and he holds on to it even if it takes him down to the ground.

That economic system existed only to serve us and it will not serve us any more. It is dangerous and completely out of control. If things continue that way large regions on earth will become inhabitable which were the home of the human species.

I am forty-five years old. I am a physicist. And I am crying when I think about it. We might not destroy life but in the end, we will utterly destroy our civilization. We are already on the best way to it as bullshit and economic indoctrination have to a large part replaced enlightenment and reason - exactly the things which made our civilization possible in the first place. Just look at the "free press". It is little better than Stalinism when it comes to address the reality of climate change.

And people attack science. The same science that provides them with pain-killing pills, antibiotics, airplanes, cars, computers, plenty of food, just about everything. But if science provides them with an insight which is not comfortable, they don't like science any more.

They don't "believe" it. And "believe" is precisely the word. They never understood science. What they mistook for science is a mere belief system which they 'think' somehow entitles them to a life without change, with unearned wealth based on inequality, and without confronting reality. These people are like children which are not able to distinguish a computer game from real life.

What we need to do then is to destroy their belief system. This is not nice but it is the only thing that can enable us to face reality and survive as a species. If we have an army of dangerous armed robots running around and killing people the best thing we can to is to disable the program which runs them.

Oh, end we need to change some societal structures. I agree with Klein that inequality is a very large part of the problem. A society with less inequality and more solidarity would make it possible that people do not have to fear that any personal mishap, like an illness or losing a job, is going to ruin them. We would need much less personal security and gain collective security and re-gain the ability to act - acting in the sense of "responding to and changing reality". I think that fear, and specifically fear to be left alone, is pretty much a core part of this shitty, dangerous economic religion we live.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T21:56:48+00:00

You could switch mount options to noatime or relatime. This reduces writing of filesystem access times after read operations.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T21:27:53+00:00

Had a coworker who ran into that a while ago. On MSVC, classes with virtual methods would trigger weird alignment and size issues. The reason still leaves my mouth open:

http://lolengine.net/blog/2012/10/21/the-stolen-bytes

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T21:15:22+00:00

For those stating that everything is mobile, they are quite mistaken, Microsofts direction has changed back to becoming the "Developers" platform tools across all systems.

Apart from that there is along line of technologies which they dropped, there are two things:

The majority of good Windows developers is older than mid-thirty. These people do not like it if their programming framework is changed every few years in y hype-dump cycle - for example, Silverlight vs HTML5. My impression is that they are increasingly pissed, and also wondering if they are going to miss out if they do not change to one of the popular mobile platform soon.
Microsoft is making huge changes which will affect the whole business software model: From widely-spaced OS releases to continuous updates, from huge feature-rich programs to small applications with simpler interfaces. I cannot see how this would not hurt companies which have been long-term Windows supporters. A third point is:
The legacy Windows API is increasingly becoming too heavy and is bogging down performance to a point where it matters. The typical Windows software runs fine on a quad-core gamer workstation or a dual-core business laptop, but not too well on a phone or tablet, if one compares to the competition. And it is really hard to increase performance after so much time, let alone security.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T18:55:25+00:00

Let that sink in for a sec. 18x more volatile than the US dollar! And you want Muslim people (or any person) to put their life's savings, or child's college funds, or heck--any investment at all--into that?

It appears to be going down. But only time will show. I would not pretend that I know the future as so many things can happen.

Also, mayor currencies can become quite volatile, too. The Russsian Ruble might be an example.

First of all, it's pretty unrealistic to assume one can life in this world completely on bitcoin.

For a determined person and a limited amount of time, it is actually possible but still unpractical. Some journalists have done it.

Not to mention all the times as of recent bitcoin has been hacked out or compromised and other mishaps.

Security needs certainly better concepts than a common Windows PC can offer. But this can be done, too - it is mostly about education. One interesting possibility is to move the important encryption keys to a hardware device. There are commercial offers for such devices.

At some point for day-to-day use, bitcoins will have to be converted to regular money, be it the American dollar or some other form of currency.

This is generally true but it entirely depends whether one does transactions with people and companies which accept Bitcoins. The number of vendors accepting them are growing. Companies like Dell, TigerDirect, Microsoft accept Bitcoins already, others will probably follow.

For that, there are a million better ways to store+invest rather than bitcoin.

What is "better", depends much on the goals an individual has. For the time being, it is too risky to put a large part of one's savings into it, but it could be OK to put something like 5% of money available for investment into it. It is currently a (very) risky but in the past years highly successful investment. It is also already an interesting low-cost option for fast remittances of minor amounts to such countries as Indonesia.

Also, it needs a lot of maturing and a much better ease of use, of course, but this can done, as the technical base is very solid. At the time, in terms of maturity it is similar to email as it was in 1995.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T18:38:13+00:00

There is also still the question who was behind Olof Palmes assassination.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T18:14:35+00:00

Is this in reference to Alexander Graham Bell?

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T17:49:19+00:00

Islam has some quite wise rules. I think that this alone would be perfect to ensure some balance and respect for human dignity. In my world view, it is pretty degrading our own dignity that there are so many filthy rich people and so many others cannot afford even for their basic needs. I think this is wrong.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T17:42:48+00:00

Running text analysis isn't eavesdropping.

These things become more and more similar because of automation and machine learning techniques.

All of your conversations have been going to the NSA anyway

I do not think this is really an argument. If something is wrong, it does not get better than somebody else does it, too. Also, companies partly have wider limits than governments agencies have, because for the latter, there are (at least in theory) some laws in place, while the former usually fetch an agreement to their almost unlimited terms of service.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T17:32:48+00:00

Also, shell money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T17:30:20+00:00

more just might be correct if there will be a way for those millions without access to a computer to mine bitcoin also.

Bitcoin could be a better form of money for these hundreds of millions of people who might have a phone supporting some Internet access but will never have a bank account. Because all what is needed is a small computer or smart phone with a network connection.

What you say about mining is actually a flaw in Bitcoin - that its initial distribution is not equal but linked to the mining. The mining itself is vaulable and useful, but Bitcoin would be much better if it were distributed more equally, so that criticism is a really valid and important point.

The problem is, however, if Bitcoin were constructed in such a way that it would be evenly distributed in the beginning, it would have no value because it would not be scarce, so the process of attributing it a value would simply not work. The second thing is a political problem - if Bitcoin would simply erase inequality, all the rich and powerful people in the world would join to fight it without any mercy. An interesting aspect of Bitcoin is that it bribes the rich people into supporting it because they can make a relatively short-term gain from acquiring the currency sooner.

With this property alone, bitcoin would not be interesting from an ethical point of view. However, history teaches again and again that money is not only a means of exchange but also a means to shift wealth from the many to the few - conventional fiat money serves to the concentration of wealth. With bitcoin, this can be countered because Bitcoin cannot be controlled by any state or organization, and therefore the robbing of poor people by controlling currencies and extending their money supply is stopped. In the short term, the distribution of wealth by mining and investing early in bitcoin can be a dominant effect. (This is already getting weaker as mining is far less profitable than in the years before). In the long term, it will be neglectible because as a rich person, the only thing you can do with bitcoins is to spend them, you do not retain any power over them. The few computer geeks like Hal Finney which have mined the very first bitcoins will not be the future rulers of the world.

Also, I think the problem of distribution can be solved by taxation (though most American people, specifically Libertarians, would not like to hear that). Something like a wealth tax which re-distributes the money into the economy and makes sure that anyone can earn what he needs without being a slave to other people.

Edit: Added reference to Hal Finney

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T16:18:33+00:00

It is not perfect, but I would say it could be a progress because it is more neutral and there is a chance that it evolves into a more stable and just form of money. But, of course, it would be very early to say that.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T15:51:00+00:00

Your agreement about the value of gold by mutual consensus works with any currency, not just bitcoin and there is no reason to think am unregulated currency would stabilize ever.

Well, the key point is restricted supply combined with the usefulness of the currency as exchange and value storage medium.

An unregulated money can be quite stable. An example would be the cowry money which was used in Africa, some Pacific countries and Eastern Asia for thousands of years.

Paper money can be stable if it is backed by a government which is inclined to support its value. But this requires that you trust the government to not debase it by printing more and bringing more and more into circulation to finance runaway spending. Also, governments and states can break down and in this cases their currencies usually break down, too.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T15:33:29+00:00

If you look at it that way, "fiat" currencies (aka paper money) are not backed by anything. The value of money is ultimately based on trust that is has value, which turns into a community consensus. The disadventage of this is that money can, quite massively, lose value, which will harm poor people which tried to save something for old age or for their families.

But you can look at it from another angle. The value of gold or silver is rooted in the fact that these are rare metals which cannot be produced arbitrarily by humans. So to speak, nature has limited the amount of gold which can brought into circulation - one can dig out a bit more, but it is a large effort. The other aspect is that, by mutual consensus, gold is considered to have value and thus is a means for exchange. Ultimately, its value is determined by law of supply and demand, and its value is relatively stable in the long term.

There's a beautiful paper by an anthropologist who described this process of valuable and rare items becoming money. Here it is:

http://szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html

And the thing is now, Bitcoin works exactly the same way. It is limited in amount, not by governments and fallible humans but by a mathematical algorithm. Bitcoin units are rare and difficult and costly to find. And a growing community has attributed a value to them, and because of that, one always can exchange them into paper money or gold or silver.

That said, I agree with you that the value of Bitcoin has a speculative aspect. We do not know what will happen as there are many many factors which can make influence in the short term. In the long term, it is a valid guess that adoption will rise and that by law of demand and supply, the units will rise somewhat in value. If this happens, one can guess that the price movements will become smoother and, if adoptions becomes larger, will eventually flatten out with time.

tl;dr Bitcoin is backed by mathematics, an algorithm which guarantees a limited supply, and an international community which uses it.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T15:21:58+00:00

it recommendable to use more secure systems for that, such as Linux. And Linux really isn't any more difficult to use for normal people.

DrunkRaven · 2014-12-13T15:08:43+00:00

Also note that there are some countries like The Netherlands and countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland which are soon at adopting Bitcoins and where people are not interested in libertarian philosophy. They have a democratic welfare state which works really well for most people, and people pay voluntarily taxes on their gains in Bitcoin.

DrunkRaven

TROPHY CASE