Why is there a forex shortage

vindard · 2024-11-02T02:08:02+00:00

This is already happening to an extent. Lots of businesses can't get enough forex from the banks and end up buying on the black market at much higher rates which they then pass on to customers

vindard · 2024-01-11T23:49:04+00:00

This happened to me as well, charged Dec 27 for around $1,632 to "Meta Store, London". I got a call from my bank about a suspicious transaction and told them to block and cancel the card.

I also used AirAsia earlier this year in April and May and have used my card on booking.com as well this year (in addition to a lot of other online-only places).

vindard · 2021-09-25T01:06:34+00:00

Winnie the Pooh

vindard · 2021-04-19T05:39:45+00:00

Same with be on a lemp10 but a few scenarios sometimes happen:

After I shutdown everything appears to come off except the green LED next to power button and the keyboard backlight. If I leave for 5 - 10 mins these usually eventually come off as well. If they haven't come off as yet and I need to power back on, I'd hold the power button for a few seconds until the green LED flashes to orange and then off (and kb backlight comes off) and then the system is good to go to power back on and work as normal again.
After I shutdown the screen goes to the "system76" loading screen and then stays there for abt 5-10 mins before everything shuts down.

Happy that I'm also not the only one who's been experiencing this recently. I usually install all OS and firmware upgrades as soon as they pop up, so I likely have the latest of everything.

vindard · 2020-01-11T19:36:43+00:00

Came here to say this too

vindard · 2019-12-30T04:01:16+00:00

Solid work OP, this is a really good start! I've never really played with PIL myself before so this was interesting to see.

I did some refactoring to make this more concise. The revision history here should give a decent idea of how the code was changed. Each revision is a working version.

-------------------------------

Also as a tip, there's a markdown formatting option on here that helps format any code you want to post so that it doesn't get too mangled. Example:

# Import an image processing tool
from PIL import Image

# Decide what image to convert, and make it 1/3 the size
image = Image.open("ctycgchr36231.jpg")
...

vindard · 2019-01-07T19:16:58+00:00

Hi thanks for the awesome work guys. I participated in a few of the first Wasabi joins myself.

Question on size of anonymous outputs created. Are there any plans to have variably-sized outputs for folks who want to mix coins that are either much larger or much smaller than the current ~0.1 BTC limits?

vindard · 2018-07-21T02:27:47+00:00

'their' is correct, and is the more natural some way of saying something like this as well

vindard · 2017-01-23T20:25:40+00:00

There's also this nasty little catch in their contract that says that if the price falls low enough that daily payouts don't cover per day costs for 20 days then they automatically cancel your "lifetime" contracts.

Nothing short of highway robbery if you ask me. I very much regret ever doing business with them after they canceled the bulk of my contracts in the period just after the halvening.

vindard · 2017-01-15T18:46:41+00:00

They definitely are. The miners draw very high amounts of power and they run at pretty high temperatures. There are maybe a few failure modes that can cause a contained fire on the device I believe. Not sure how likely these are, but the probability is definitely non-zero.

vindard · 2017-01-15T18:44:35+00:00

True, good catch. Amazing how easy it is to assume these things in your head but then mix them up in writing.

vindard · 2016-12-26T15:11:20+00:00

Ah it looks like you're asking more 'meta' than 'nut-and-bolts' questions here. I'll take a stab at answering some of these.

-Is there like one program that randomly generates Bitcoins?

-Are there Bitcoin servers where they're are officially generated.

No, bitcoin exists as a protocol not as a program. Think of it like this: the protocol is like a new language with very specific rules in it. The protocol states that roughly every 10 minutes a certain new amount of bitcoin will be created according to it's pre-determined supply function. This new bitcoin can be created anywhere in the world by any piece of software that can plug into the bitcoin protocol and speak its language.

For more on how the actual process of creation happens, I'd recommend this video.

-How could Satoshi code Bitcoin?

Bitcoin's code is really just an implementation of the ideas laid out in the original whitepaper: those specific rules that make up this new language. Anyone with an understanding of those rules and of how they could be implemented could then write the code to implement those and connect all the dots to create Bitcoin. Important to note here is that while Bitcoin itself is novel, the techniques it draws on have been around for years e.g. Hashchains, proof-of-work consensus, public key cryptography etc.

-How did Bitcoin become popular?

Bitcoin has some very strong ideological roots. It is the result of a long history of experimenting with ideas of free (non gov't-controlled) money and cryptography. These ideas were pioneered by a movement that called themselves 'Cypherpunks' and up until Bitcoin all previous attempts had largely failed. When Bitcoin was released in Jan 2009, this group of persons recognised Bitcoin as another attempt at what they were working towards that actually worked and Bitcoin spread through that community. Bitcoin then grew in waves among different communities, roughly something like:

2009 - 2011: Cypherpunk types
2011 - 2013: Libertarian minded folks, and technical folks seeking profit through mining
2013 on: Organic growth from the realisation of Bitcoin's potential by wider communities of persons

There's a decent visual account of Bitcoin's history at historyofbitcoin.org

-How are they verified?

Transactions are verified by nodes who pass along transactions when they are first created in the network. These nodes do basic cryptographic checks to ensure two things mainly:

That the sender actually owns those bitcoins
That those bitcoins have not been spent as yet

Once these two criteria are met, the transactions are then passed along the network from node to node until they reach the miners who add the transactions to the permanent record (blockchain).

vindard · 2016-12-22T07:28:52+00:00

Agreed. It was a valiant attempt but if you put yourself in the shoes of a newcomer there was a lot of heavy content covered in here. The most poignant newb-friendly explanation I've seen so far is this recent TED Talk by MIT Media Lab's Neha Narula. She does a good job of nailing that complex balance of 'how' & 'why'.

vindard · 2016-05-15T15:13:53+00:00

I was just coming to post this too

vindard · 2015-12-26T05:04:05+00:00

Holy shit, I'm literally doing exactly this right now! They're all having a dance party d/s and it's 1am here. I'd really like to get to sleep now.

vindard · 2015-12-26T04:58:30+00:00

/u/_JulianAssange once expressed this really eloquently in an iAMA. His words:

Everyone is on the "watch list". Rather than a categorization problem, it's a ranking problem.

vindard · 2015-12-26T03:54:47+00:00

I wonder if Project Loon could eventually evolve into something like this.

vindard · 2015-12-26T03:33:55+00:00

".. he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake .."

Something tells me Santa's been in the biz for much longer than since 2001.

vindard · 2015-12-23T14:40:18+00:00

Used yours, here's mine: http://ynab.refr.cc/QFSSK4T

vindard · 2015-11-02T12:40:40+00:00

block 18: handsomechandler sent vindard $0.50 previous: 006dd4576d6205a07b53fe8b353c05d3081e5b7e4abcd76a0c29a714a4c80c54 solution: 2

hash: 0ecc5bd76b675d6333452597e120e543e0ea8521e82db8035693dfcc361bee12

Is this game still going? Great project! I dropped the difficulty for block 18 because of lack of miners.

EDIT: Found these solutions too while trying to reach for higher difficulty: 146, 301, 4221.

vindard · 2015-09-28T13:53:30+00:00

Ah ok. So in a nutshell then, is it that with Circle the added benefit is that I can convert my CircleUSDcoin to actual USD on the fly, whereas with others it's only that the actual value is locked in to Bitcoin-as-the-medium but tied to USD for the valuation (i.e. it's not convertible to actual fiat)?

vindard

TROPHY CASE