It looks like theymos (or another admin) has added a custom title to TS.

I would say this is appropriate based on how much time TS spent here, and how engaged he was with the community over the many years he was here.

For diesel, I would think a lot of people who are buying diesel are not personally paying for gas, but rather their company is (or they are going to get reimbursed after putting it on their card). An employee filling up may simply not care about paying the lowest price, or if they are going to put it on their credit card, they may want the higher price so they can get more credit card rewards and will get reimbursed regardless of what they pay. I can't think of any other reason why someone would be willing to pay that much more, assuming there is actually gas available at the lower price.

As for the "regular" gas, I suspect some gas stations figure that people will be willing to pay the higher price rather than wait in line to pay a lower price, especially if they are filling up to/from work and waiting in line would make them late.

After certain (unknown) limits are reached, decentralization will be negatively affected by increasing the block size limit. Assuming widespread consensus, raising the max block size to 4M +1 weights will not affect decentralization. The same is also probably true if the max block size was increased to 1.25MB/5M weights. If the max block size were to be increased to (again assuming widespread consensus) say 100MB, then decentralization would very much be negatively affected. I am not sure the point in which decentralization is affected after raising the max block size to a certain amount. There are of course costs associated with raising the maximum block size, so I would not necessarily advocate for raising the max block size merely because doing so would not harm decentralization.

In terms of the number of full nodes, I think new technology, especially privacy technology is having a greater impact on the number of nodes. Users can more reliably use light wallets, including those that have privacy features, so there is not the same incentives to run a full node as there were in the past. I also get the feeling that bitcoin's user base has evolved over time, and the current user base it more concerned with utility and less with privacy, and less with maximizing security regardless of the cost, and this demographic favors light clients over full nodes.

I don't have the time to teach, but would be willing to help with a specific question you may have.

I also believe many websites that offer online classes have forums in which students can ask questions.

So for example, the EITC was revised such that if someone has earned income of less than $31,200 ($15 * 2080 {if someone works 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year, they will work 2080 hours}), they will receive $y as a refundable credit, with y being ($31,200 - [earned income * 1.0]) * 0.88 (the lowest tax bracket is 12%).

If someone making $20/hour during the first six months of the year, gets laid off, and cannot find work in the next two months, will have a 100% tax rate if they find work making $20/hour for their work for the rest of the year because every dollar they earn will reduce their earnings by $0.88, and the federal income tax will take the remaining $0.12. (Someone making $20/hour for 6 months will make $20,800, and if they work an additional 13 weeks @$20/hour, they will earn $31,200).

If someone is making $12/hour at their job, if they were to receive a promotion involving them earning $14/hour but with more responsibilities, their additional income would be taxed at 100% in my above example because they would receive $0.88 less via the EITC for every additional dollar they earn, and the federal income tax would take the remaining $0.12. This is especially troubling because it gives incentives for employees to not take promotions involving earning more money, which may lead to longer-term reductions in earnings when they would not be in contention for subsequent promotions involving even higher wages.

In the above example, the earned income multiplier could be reduced to below 1.0, but this would still result in high effective marginal tax rates for low earners. It would also result in more people receiving the welfare benefit who doesn't need it.

If you want to have transfer payment welfare, it is best for the cutoff to be well into the middle class, where it is less trivial to turn down an additional dollar of income, and who will not be as harmed as much by not receiving the welfare.

What I described doesnt need to be run by a government bureaucracy. I was thinking that non-profits (or potentially for-profit entities) could receive grants from the government in order to administer the skills training and could be paid based on outcomes.

I agree that government bureaucracy is generally bad, however, I also believe it is superior to teach low-income (skill) workers the necessary skills necessary to earn higher incomes. This reduces reliance on government and should in the long run benefit everyone.  

Sportsbooks have betting limits that can potentially be evaded via multiaccounting. Wager limits are put into place in order to reduce the likelihood that betting will become too one-sided such that the sportsbook stands to lose if there is a particular outcome.

Ahh yes, I had forgotten that Trump had beaten ISIS early in his first term. I believe most (if not all) of these were in an already active war zone, so it wasn’t an escalation as the strikes in Syria and Iraq were.

When you place a bet on the outcome of an event, you are risking money, and the sportsbook might need to pay you if you bet correctly. If the sportsbook has priced the bet correctly, the sportsbook will stand to make money regardless of the outcome because the sum total of the payout will be less than the sum total of the losing bets. Sportsbooks might be risking a small percentage of the total wagers on an event early in the betting, but once betting has been open for a while, they wont stand to lose much on any given bet.

A non-custodial sportsbook would need to put up their own funds on each bet, which would raise the cost of running the sportsbook.

An oracle could still play the same types of games as described in the OP.

I don't think it is possible for a sportsbook to be non-custodial. The outcome of sporting events cannot be cryptographically verified.

You are describing situations in which people are effectively selling their coin in fairly small amounts. I don't think tx fees would be a high priority for people in these situations. I think people would care more about the need to buy x, or the rate they are getting.

Also, in my experience, it is more common for sites to require that a tx is 'seen' within a certain amount of time, not confirmed. If you send a tx right after three blocks are found in a short period, and it takes the next two blocks 90 minutes each to be found, paying tx fees consistent with 2-3 block confirmation time will probably still take several hours to confirm.

This would not be a good idea. It would effectively put anyone making less than $x/hr at a 100% marginal tax bracket until they make more than $x/hr. The EITC also does not discriminate based on how much a person works, so it would also mean that after a person earns $1 from their employer, they are in a 100% tax bracket, until they make more than the threshold so that they are no longer eligible for the EITC. This would result in people choosing to not look for work if they are fired or laid off early in the year until late in the year or the following year if their earned income is below the EITC limits.

As I noted above, it is far superior to let the free market decide what the "minimum wage" should be -- in other words, if a company were to pay too little, they would be unable to find and retain employees.

If the government were to take action on the minimum wage, IMO the best solution would be that anyone making less than $x/hr is eligible for free/low-cost skills training that will help them become qualified for higher-paying jobs that tend to pay above $x/hr. (teach them to fish).

Another point of contention I have seen is that of promotions and (new account) bonuses.

I suspect the above are 'loss leaders' that some crypto sportsbooks use to try to get new customers. When customers are suspected of abusing these promotions and bonuses, sportsbooks will sometimes conduct additional due diligence before allowing withdrawals and may process withdrawals in what some may describe as a questionable way.

If you want to pay 10 sat/vbyte you should just pay that amount and wait for the transaction to confirm. You won’t get any benefit from waiting for many transactions confirming that pay this rate.

Like I said, sanctions are an act of War. Sanctions could lead to oil being unavailable to the West.

Sanctions are also a means to get the citizens of a country to try to affect change in their government. The governments of the UAE and the Saudis have money to insulate themselves for longer than the West could survive without their oil.

I should be clear that I believe that women in middle eastern countries should have more rights. With that being said, these countries have different cultural norms than the West. I would point to the number of asylum claims from women who are from the UAE and Saudi Arabia as to how women in these countries view themselves.


What do you propose to happen to these countries? These countries are not democracies, so public pressure will not have much effect, as there are no elections that might result in changes. Sanctions are an act of War, and could result in net harm if they decline to sell their oil to the rest of the world.

Women have fewer rights in these countries, and they are something closer to being oppressed by Western standards, however, the government still has the consent of the governed, even from the women.

Trump did exactly one strike, and that was in response to a gas attack in April 2017. Trump also ordered a drone strike to kill an Iranian general.

To be fair to Biden, Iranian forces (and proxy forces) have been attacking US troops and assets recently.

The Saudi and UAE governments have the consent of their people, even though they are not democracies. Their people, by and large, are not oppressed by most standards, although they don't have the same freedoms as citizens in the US do. Both countries also have vast natural resources that are needed by the rest of the world.

The above means that it will be very difficult to overthrow either government because any new government installed would be viewed by their respective people as illegitimate.

This I think is actually a good thing. It is a good practice to search for scam accusations before trusting someone with your coin. If there are many threads about abc scammer/scam company, it should be more difficult for that scammer to continue scamming other people.

This has less value. If a company is no longer in business, absent any news about repayment, litigation or the like, I don't see much value in discussing what happened years ago when the company is no longer relevant. There is an argument to consolidate these types of threads.

I also don't think scam accusation threads are intended for casual reading. The purpose of these threads is to warn others and to put pressure on scammers to return stolen coin/property.

The free market is already effectively making the minimum wage at something around $15/hour. Many major companies that require little/no experience have starting wages at or about $15/hour. If you are an employer and try to pay your employees something less than $15/hour, you will have difficulty finding and retaining employees.

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Raising the statutory minimum wage is not possible via budget reconciliation. Senate rules are clear on this. If Democrats want to raise the minimum wage, they will need to negotiate with Republicans. With that being said, Republicans agreeing to raise the minimum wage after receiving some concessions is not entirely unrealistic due to my statement above.