Corona viruses have been around since the 1930s, and many others have been here for longer. There is no reason to believe that it will go away, it will just mutate.
Yes, they were discovered in humans in the 30's. Possibly been with us for much longer. Certainly this one won't just go away by itself, and will mutate. I have lived through 4 pandemics with no significant problems or side effects - this virus is the fourth. I have done this without any vaccination or pharmaceuticals for over 60 years. There is no substitute for a healthy natural immune system.
Yes, a healthy immune system is vital. But vaccination is a huge help on top of that. What would your argument be in response to the below, from the Russian vaccine thread? I can find no good independent research that proves that vaccines are superior to natural immunity, and they seem to word by an inferior approach to mimic the natural processes.
Do you disagree that global polio cases have reduced dramatically since the vaccine programme started up? Natural immunity had thousands of years to work to eradicate the virus, and was profoundly and tragically unsuccessful. |
|
|
|
the deadliest was Spanish flu that claimed over 50 million lives
If we are considering which is the deadliest pandemic in (recorded) human history, then it has to be the Black Death in the 14th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_DeathEstimated death toll is between 75 and 200 million... which as a proportion of the population at the time was absolutely huge. It took a couple of hundred years for population numbers to recover. One positive effect - probably the only positive effect - was that the death of so many workers led to a power shift - with workers in such short supply, they became valuable - which led to the demise of feudalism. https://www.ancient.eu/article/1543/effects-of-the-black-death-on-europe/ |
|
|
|
non will teach you how to control your emotion when the market go against you.
This happens to many new traders including me, it took me time to admit to some mistakes I made in my early days, this is when guilt and regret set in, which is unavoidable in crypto industry because of market volatility and fake out.
It is often forgotten that practice trading in small amounts doesn't prepare you perfectly for real trading where you are risking large amounts of money. It is easier to keep emotions out of the way when dealing with small trades, because the money doesn't mean that much to you. However it is very easy when gambling large quantities of money, to be in the exact same situation where you made a good decision before with small trades, to now make a bad decision. The reason is as the amount you're trading increases, the emotional impact amplifies. |
|
|
|
|
I think we can expect ETH price to be considerably higher by the end of the year, due to 2.0. There are though, as always, many potential complicating factors. If there is a DeFi scandal or something else to end the insane FOMO, then this could have a big negative impact on ETH price. Also we have to consider the wider economy, and whether any damage due to CV19 will impact crypto prices.
|
|
|
|
If you are a long term holder, then don't watch the peaks in the graphs, but watch the trend of the low points. That will give you a feel for the true prospects for the price.
Better yet, if you are looking at price trends on coinmarketcap, then you should a) look over all time, and b) switch the chart to log scale. This will help to give you a better understanding of price movements. The reason I advise to switch to 'all time' is to smooth out all of the short-term noise and volatility. The reason I advise to switch to log scale is because we have seen orders-of-magnitude price changes over the years, and if you use a linear scale then historic price changes are smeared out to a flat line, which doesn't help to give you perspective. But using a log scale reveals the historic movements. The two approaches combined give what I think is a decent picture of how the price has changed:  Now this should give you a starting point in determining what you think bitcoin might be worth in a few years' time. There are then a huge number of other factors to consider, such as changes in adoption, changes in use case, regulatory positions etc. The short answer is everyone is guessing as to future price. All that you can do is decide for yourself what you think is most likely to happen, and then buy/sell accordingly. |
|
|
|
And how long can it be a quantum-safe address?
It's different to how we think of traditional computers increasing in power. It's not the case that a quantum-safe approach would be safe against current and near-future QCs, but some future orders-of-magnitude-more-powerful QC could then break it. Post-quantum cryptography devises solutions that are secure not against the processing power of a QC, but against the nature of a QC. A quantum computer is superior to a classical computer only for certain use cases. They excel at solving the sort of cryptography that is based on integer factorization, discrete logs, or elliptic curve discrete logs. As an example, Shor's algorithm is no threat to symmetric cryptography. The best QC attack on symmetric cryptography is Grover's algorithm, which offers only a very small improvement on the best classical attacks. |
|
|
|
Thanks for that. I've made a quick post on that thread now, briefly summarising how much more effective a QC is at breaking bitcoin's cryptography, and outlining why QCs have such vast potential. Hopefully this is of some use to the discussion! |
|
|
|
Quantum computers with connection on Bitcoin started to pop again, I also heard before about these quantum computers will make Bitcoin disappear or cryptocurrency itself. I still don't believe it, it's kinda a myth, lol.
For sure, if people will let this happen, I don't think cryptocurrency will only be in danger here.
With a normal classical computer, it takes 2^128 operations to derive a bitcoin private key from a public key. That's: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 For a quantum computer running Shor's algorithm, that drops to 128^3, a much more manageable: 2,097,152 Normal asymmetric cryptography is utterly insecure against a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. The question is how long it would take to build such a quantum computer. Media reports often focus on number of qubits, but this is only part of the story. Signal decoherence is the biggest problem to overcome. As an aside, the reason that quantum computers are vastly more powerful than classical computers (for certain problems) is due to superposition and entanglement. A normal classical bit can be 0 or 1. A quantum bit, or qubit, resolves to 0 or 1 when measured, but prior to measurement the value is a superposition of 0 and 1, it is a probability distribution that covers both at the same time. A quantum computer can effectively 'explore both paths' at the same time. The second point is that multiple qubits can be entangled into a combined state. An entangled 2 qubit system is in a superposition of 00, 01, 10 and 11. For 3 qubits, this becomes 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110 and 111. This is why QCs can scale up in power so dramatically. Processing power increases 2^n. For an n-qubit entangled system, a QC can explore 2^n potential outcomes simultaneously. As for the safety of bitcoin, there are many potentially 'quantum-safe' approaches under development. However, this creates a new problem. If bitcoin adopts a quantum-safe defence, then everyone will have to move their coins to new, quantum-safe addresses. Any coins that aren't moved (and this includes all 'lost' or currently irretrievable coins) can be stolen quite easily by a QC. |
|
|
|
This is expected to happen worldwide because of the pandemic and teleworking. If people can work from home and cities are no longer as attractive, this is normal to happen.
Indeed. Whilst I'm sure that city living will retain a lot of its desirability, it will certainly lose some if a large number of people are no longer required to work in city-centre offices each day. Hopefully this will trigger a levelling of opportunity and standard of living within each nation. We might expect house prices in cities to fall somewhat, and in cheaper areas to rise somewhat. We might also anticipate that the rural to urban 'brain drain' effect might be lessened. Longer-term, we may even see effects across continents or the whole world. |
|
|
|
|
The market has been bullish for quite a while now. The latest rally started when DeFi and anticipation of the 2.0 upgrade pushed ETH prices up. Other alts then followed, and finally bitcoin, too.
The 2018 bear has long gone. The initial downtrun from Covid-19 has gone too, the crypto markets have recovered quite well. But it remains to be seen whether the bullish sentiment will persist. World economies are going to struggle in the months ahead as the economic effects of lockdown start to be felt. The question we need to consider for the future is whether the crypto markets can remain immune to this.
|
|
|
|
Red Bull needs to find a better driver than Albon. Being lapped by your teammate in the same car.
Albon isn't performing particularly well. But he is also to an extent made to look bad because Verstappen is really performing extremely well in a car that is nowhere near the quality of the Mercedes. I would suspect that most drivers would look poor if they have Verstappen as a team-mate. Similar to how Bottas doesn't look great, because we can only compare him against Hamilton. |
|
|
|
I think most people in the intelligence community, who Trump may still not trust so much, are going to advise against a move like this.
Personally I'm not sure how likely it is to happen. It is always difficult to tell with Trump; what he says and what he does are often completely irreconcilable. But one thing we should never underestimate Trump on is his ego and his desire for revenge against those who have wronged him (or who he perceives as having wronged him). It seems plausible to me that Trump might release Snowden just as revenge against the intelligence agencies. |
|
|
|
Is the US clinging onto "legacy tech" as old as coal? That's news to me, though I have to admit that I'm no expert when it comes to how our country is powered.
Coal is in probably terminal decline, but gas has increased to make up the difference. Renewables are growing slowly.  https://ourworldindata.org/energy#energy-consumption-by-sourceI have got my fingers and toes crossed that he does not get reelected in November and that his replacement will at least attempt to undo some of the damage Trump has done to the country (and the world, for that matter).
Biden has said he would rejoin the Paris Agreement. Biden will rejoin the Paris Agreement, but simply rejoining is not enough. Biden will use every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world to raise their ambitions alongside the United States. A Biden Administration will: Re-enter the Paris Agreement on day one of the Biden Administration and lead a major diplomatic push to raise the ambitions of countries’ climate targets. https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/#I'm not familiar with the intricacies of US politics, but am I right in saying that 'day 1' of a Biden administration would actually start in January? So the Nov 4 withdrawal completion would still take effect, i.e., Biden couldn't cancel it, and would have to rejoin a couple of months later. I think Trump is a nationalist, not a globalist
Certainly. From the outside, it looks like Trumpism is a return to US isolationism. This of course plays right into China's hands. This is really not the time for the US to be relinquishing their role as the de facto world leader! We all hope Biden wins in November. |
|
|
|
|
Snowden has been unfairly demonised for what was a tremendous act of public service, as is unfortunately often the case with whistleblowers. Vilification rather than protection is the standard approach. There are obvious parallels here with Chelsea Manning, whose ludicrously harsh sentence was commuted by Obama. Normally you'd expect Trump to be vehemently opposed to someone like Snowden, who is a sort of anti-Trump in that he is famous for exposing hidden truths.
Normally you'd expect Trump to be decrying him as a traitor and not even considering releasing him... but obviously the word 'Russia' looms large in this.
|
|
|
|
@Cnut237 human tends to be overly optimistic about technological development. Remember about flying cars and stuff when we watch old sci-fi movies? This argument about the robot and AI exist decades ago [...] the job loss because of automation will not be that huge because of robots' technological limitations and also expensive in terms of investment and maintenance cost. Even now, in 3rd world countries (and China), it's still cheaper to employ human force in various industries. Furthermore, some services always require human to human contacts, such as in hospitality.
Yes, I made that point myself in the post responding to Suchmoon... agreed, nothing is definite. The point about third world countries is addressed in some of my links above. Many companies have outsourced their labour to countries where work is cheaper... it has been mooted that with rising automation, the outsourcing will go into reverse, hitting countries like China quite hard. Hospitality, yes, and there are other jobs where human contact will likely always remain. The question though is is this a large or a small proportion of total jobs? It's difficult to envisage millions of new hospitality jobs suddenly opening up. I am meriting your post because you managed the correct spelling of the Terminator. |
|
|
|
AI-driven robots won't be cheap [...] massive hurdles that will take decades of painful slow progress. [...] Then there is the whole new industry to maintain the army of robots and massive data centers. [...] all I have to go on is my personal experience, which is not directly related to AI but revolves around many of the same technologies.
Yes, agreed. This is all speculative. There will doubtless be some automation and some new job creation, but we are just estimating the extent. I will also concede that speculation as to what sort of technologies we will have 5 or 10 years down the line has a tendency to be wildly optimistic. Similarly to yours, my personal experience also relates to these technologies. I have seen a lot of job losses through automation of lower-level technical roles, and the process is accelerating. This has been partially offset by the creation of new higher-level roles, but a considerably smaller number. Appreciate this is anecdotal, but I believe it to be representative of the underlying trend. Yes, let's (get our robots to) check back in 10 years' time. |
|
|
|
jobs will become increasingly scarce
I disagree with that. Massive technological advances over the last couple of hundred years didn't result in fewer jobs, quite the opposite. Nor will the "AI" happen overnight. Automation has been going on for decades and it's certainly something to keep in mind for someone choosing a career path. Certainly if you disagree on this point, then UBI becomes much less of a pressing issue. I agree that automation will take time, but I don't think we can use history as a guide in this instance. Historic automation has largely been about replacing human physical skills with something better. This led to a increase in jobs that use human cognitive skills. The difference this time is that it is human cognitive skills that are being automated. I'm not saying AI will wipe out all jobs, merely that once human physical and cognitive skills are automated, it is difficult to envisage where new opportunities may arise. Numerous recent studies have concluded that there will be huge job losses: A number of studies have predicted that automation will take a large proportion of jobs in the future, but estimates of the level of unemployment this will cause vary. Research by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School showed that employees engaged in "tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms" are at risk of displacement. The study, published in 2013, shows that automation can affect both skilled and unskilled work and both high and low-paying occupations; however, low-paid physical occupations are most at risk. It estimated that 47% of US jobs were at high risk of automation.[19] In 2014, the economic think tank Bruegel released a study, based on the Frey and Osborne approach, claiming that across the European Union's 28 member states, 54% of jobs were at risk of automation. The countries where jobs were least vulnerable to automation were Sweden, with 46.69% of jobs vulnerable, the UK at 47.17%, the Netherlands at 49.50%, and France and Denmark, both at 49.54%. The countries where jobs were found to be most vulnerable were Romania at 61.93%, Portugal at 58.94%, Croatia at 57.9%, and Bulgaria at 56.56%.[109][110] A 2015 report by the Taub Center found that 41% of jobs in Israel were at risk of being automated within the next two decades.[111] In January 2016, a joint study by the Oxford Martin School and Citibank, based on previous studies on automation and data from the World Bank, found that the risk of automation in developing countries was much higher than in developed countries. It found that 77% of jobs in China, 69% of jobs in India, 85% of jobs in Ethiopia, and 55% of jobs in Uzbekistan were at risk of automation.[112] The World Bank similarly employed the methodology of Frey and Osborne. A 2016 study by the International Labour Organization found 74% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Thailand, 75% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Vietnam, 63% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in Indonesia, and 81% of salaried electrical & electronics industry positions in the Philippines were at high risk of automation.[113] A 2016 United Nations report stated that 75% of jobs in the developing world were at risk of automation, and predicted that more jobs might be lost when corporations stop outsourcing to developing countries after automation in industrialized countries makes it less lucrative to outsource to countries with lower labor costs.[114]
The Council of Economic Advisers, a US government agency tasked with providing economic research for the White House, in the 2016 Economic Report of the President, used the data from the Frey and Osborne study to estimate that 83% of jobs with an hourly wage below $20, 31% of jobs with an hourly wage between $20 and $40, and 4% of jobs with an hourly wage above $40 were at risk of automation.[115] A 2016 study by Ryerson University found that 42% of jobs in Canada were at risk of automation, dividing them into two categories - "high risk" jobs and "low risk" jobs. High risk jobs were mainly lower-income jobs that required lower education levels than average. Low risk jobs were on average more skilled positions. The report found a 70% chance that high risk jobs and a 30% chance that low risk jobs would be affected by automation in the next 10–20 years.[116] A 2017 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that up to 38% of jobs in the US, 35% of jobs in Germany, 30% of jobs in the UK, and 21% of jobs in Japan were at high risk of being automated by the early 2030s.[117] A 2017 study by Ball State University found about half of American jobs were at risk of automation, many of them low-income jobs.[118] A September 2017 report by McKinsey & Company found that as of 2015, 478 billion out of 749 billion working hours per year dedicated to manufacturing, or $2.7 trillion out of $5.1 trillion in labor, were already automatable. In low-skill areas, 82% of labor in apparel goods, 80% of agriculture processing, 76% of food manufacturing, and 60% of beverage manufacturing were subject to automation. In mid-skill areas, 72% of basic materials production and 70% of furniture manufacturing was automatable. In high-skill areas, 52% of aerospace and defense labor and 50% of advanced electronics labor could be automated.[119] In October 2017, a survey of information technology decision makers in the US and UK found that a majority believed that most business processes could be automated by 2022. On average, they said that 59% of business processes were subject to automation.[120] A November 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute that analyzed around 800 occupations in 46 countries estimated that between 400 million and 800 million jobs could be lost due to robotic automation by 2030. It estimated that jobs were more at risk in developed countries than developing countries due to a greater availability of capital to invest in automation.[121] Job losses and downward mobility blamed on automation has been cited as one of many factors in the resurgence of nationalist and protectionist politics in the US, UK and France, among other countries.[122][123][124][125][126]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#StudiesWhilst this is not a universal consensus, there is still a lot of agreement. A PWC study (2018) breaks this into 3 (overlapping) waves: 1. Algorithm wave: focused on automation of simple computational tasks and analysis of structured data
in areas like finance, information and communications – this is already well underway.
2. Augmentation wave: focused on automation of repeatable tasks such as filling in forms, communicating
and exchanging information through dynamic technological support, and statistical analysis of
unstructured data in semi-controlled environments such as aerial drones and robots in warehouses – this is
also underway, but is likely to come to full maturity in the 2020s.
3. Autonomy wave: focused on automation of physical labour and manual dexterity, and problem solving in
dynamic real-world situations that require responsive actions, such as in manufacturing and transport (e.g.
driverless vehicles) – these technologies are under development already, but may only come to full maturity
on an economy-wide scale in the 2030s. https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/assets/international-impact-of-automation-feb-2018.pdf  |
|
|
|
always be moderate with the pumps, don't get caught with your greed and sell if you have profited.
Yes. This is an important point to remember. It can be difficult to convince yourself that's it's the right choice, but in general if you've made a profit then it is better to sell whilst the coin is still rising. The reason for this is that the inevitable price drop, when it comes, often happens extremely quickly, and it is easy to see all of your profits evaporate. If you're not in a position to keep checking the price every 5 minutes, then you should make a decision on when you're profits are sufficient, and sell up at that point. Unless of course you believe that the coin will continue rising for a long time to come. But given how dramatic the rise has been in this instance, it's hard to see it not overshooting and then falling hard. |
|
|
|
Since we now have the entire population requesting a fixed budget this comes as an additional burden to taxpayers who now have to pay more taxes to finance this, and in return only get a percentage of their tax back as UBI (a fixed rate, upper class people also get this rate so it's not very useful to them). The higher tax bracket you're in the more you lose. But this strategy hurts the working class people the most
The crucial point is that they can get more than 100% back, because people on higher salaries are taxed more. For example, someone on a reasonable but below average salary might pay an additional $7k tax, but get a UBI payment of $10k, making an overall gain of $3k. Working class people would gain, not lose. The expectation surely would be that if you are a below-average earner you'd gain, average you'd notice no change, above average you'd lose. Ignoring the fact that in a sense everyone gains from having a healthier and more robust economy with fewer social problems. To be honest I'm starting to think we can implement better social welfare programs than UBI, I suggest two different programs for the unemployed and the workers in low tax brackets respectively. The workers program will pay only as much to cover basic benefits. The unemployed program will pay much more money but say half as much as an average job's salary. These amounts are then adjusted for each region or state depending on their standard of living.
I'm not sure about this approach. Wouldn't it disincentivise work? To me the greatest appeal of UBI would be the simplicity and less room for waste or corruption. Everyone gets it without having to prove anything.
Yes, this is how it needs to be implemented. It is part-financed by dismantling the complex and expensive-to-maintain welfare system and replacing it with something much, much simpler. I will come back on your other point about the automation question later today, if I get the chance. |
|
|
|
Maybe altcoin season did really start?
I think this was all driven by ETH's huge rise. After ETH started building up in price, other alts then followed. And after this, BTC joined in to finally push and hold above the $10k threshold. The two reasons for ETH's sudden rise as far as I can see were a) the imminent arrival of 2.0 and staking, and b) Some FOMO over DeFi. The second of these I think is the reason that ChainLink has risen so much. The FOMO is such that we will surely enter bubble territory sooner or later, if we haven't already. You just have to mention 'DeFi', and people get excited. Very reminiscent of people mentioning 'ICO' back in 2017. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
