I wouldn't jump into conclusion that everything is resolved just like that, specially since Erdogan was brought to Iran to be reprimanded and considering that he has lost everything in the new world order and he was threatening to destabilize Syria and Iraq a bone had to be thrown for him to bite on for the time being.

Nevertheless, this was a small positive news ~2 weeks ago.

I gotta admit, that is weird! Maybe it is done like this to shorten the code and not need multiple branches.
Since the result of subtraction (beta-recid) is not used anywhere else, it is just a temporary variable used inside the ternary conditional operator to check if computed y (or beta) is even or not.

The first one looks like the Elliptic Curve equation (correct form is y²=x³ + ax + b with a=0 and b=7 for secp256k1) when you only have x and want to find y you have to compute square root of the right side (sqrt of x³ +7).

To find square root mod p when p%4 = 3 (prime of secp256k1 curve is like that) you can compute x^(p+1)/4 (mod p) instead.

0 or 1 is subtracted from the recid not the square root.

When signing the message hash the recid is computed by adding 1 to it if y was odd and adding 0 if it were even. So when recovering public keys if that 1 existed in recid we have to return the odd y.

Another way of looking at it is that XOR makes more sense than OR considering the fact that the idea of Bech32 encoding and its error correction checksum has been adapted from CRC and the algorithm used for CRC32 for example looks like this (it uses XOR):

What EU needs is independence. For example imagine what the world would have looked like if EU as part of NATO accepted the Russian concerns about their expansion eastward and stopped escalating despite what US demanded of them. We would not have seen Ukraine invasion in first place and EU economy wouldn't have been in this situation for euro to even collapse!

IMO it's a very complicated situation.

It all comes down to petrodollar, we know that US dollar's real value is far below its current price simply because it is not backed by anything (whether gold or actual domestic production like China). In other words US economy is massive in size but extremely weak and fragile and if petrodollar dies US could become like North Korea or Venezuela. So in order to keep it strong something has to keep it strong and what is better than other countries being forced to use it as reserve and trade currency. The biggest trades are energy trades namely oil and gas.

Remember that one of the main US policies is security in insecurity or more precisely security of United States in insecurity of others.

Middle East is the biggest source of energy and according to US policy it has to always be chaotic with US favored governments ruling over as much parts of the region as possible. This means US can enforce its policies over the world's energy keeping US dollar alive and strong while keeping the region unsafe to justify its military presence and also to sell arms and make a ton of money.
Hence the invasion of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc and the wish to eventually invade Iran. And also the colonization of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, etc.
On the other hand EU is the biggest importer of energy and many of the industrialized countries there like Germany heavily depend on imports. At the same time none of them have independence and have to provide US interests.

But the problem with the chaos strategy is that when chaos is created, things get out of hand and become unpredictable. This is why we see Saudis that always obeyed the order to increase then decrease oil price over the past 4 decades suddenly say NO to US when they are asked to decrease the price or when they start selling their oil to China using Yuan instead of Dollar (ie. the grave offense)!
This strategy backfires regularly because chaos is unpredictable. Which is why we see the inflation hitting US hard these days.

What US is doing in this situation is making the best out of the worst situation.
1- They want Russia to be stuck in the war and continue having casualties and become weaker.
2- They want Russian economy to start shrinking since it was recovering before the war.
3- They don't want EU to normalize their relations with Russia to save their countries.
4- They also don't want to lose EU or have the union fall apart.
5- They want to rule Middle East despite the fact that all their plans have fallen apart over the past couple of years (starting in 2018)
6-...
Obviously they can't have all of it, so each of these dreams is only fulfilled partially.
1- Russia is stuck in the war and is having casualties but not as much as US wanted
2- Russian economy was battered but didn't shrink as US wanted, in fact Ruble went up against dollar to a new ATH in 5 years.
3- EU is still buying Russian energy despite US wishes (decreased the purchase)
4- EU is getting weaker so they become more dependent on US but the unrest is growing and the union is not as strong as before. But also their defense budgets grew (which US wanted) and NATO became more active (which again US wanted).
5. The chaos is still ongoing in M.E. which US is trying to handle as best as they can

So for example when it comes to gas, some gas is being sold to EU but not too much to recover their economy. Which is why IMO the fake explosion in US happens that cuts off the LNG exports to EU by 40% IIRC but not entirely. And at the same time that gas is sold domestically decreasing the gas price in US itself.

P.S. On top of all that, a new world order is showing up that decreases US dominance over the world which makes all things even more complicated.

This picture doesn't mean what you think it means.
This looks more like someone is trying to reflect the very new FUD that they have been telling people regarding the non-existent correlation between bitcoin and US markets. The big lie that says "bitcoin rises because US stock market rises and it falls if it falls".

The worst part is that people tend to forget cases that don't affect bitcoin and only remember those that do even if they have a tiny effect. For example when bitcoin price was falling some time ago and then Elon started his FUD campaign everyone thought he caused the crash! Then he tried his FUD campaign a couple of more times and it had no effects on the price whatsoever like the most recent one.
But people only remember that first case not the rest!!!

I disagree because the Ukraine war does not affect bitcoin at all. Not even a little bit simply because there is no link between bitcoin and that war.

The effects of this war is on other markets, more specifically the US and EU economy. So when for example the US stock market crashed hard many bitcoiners panicked and started selling their bitcoins irrationally hence causing the bitcoin crash.
That crash has not stopped, for example EU economy is still shrinking whereas bitcoin price stopped dropping and in fact it recovered a little bit. So the only thing that is priced in is the panic sell.

Writing a correct benchmark is harder than writing a correct code. This is a very good example since it is not benchmarking OR, XOR speeds. The loop itself and the difference between how the compiler deals with  "increment |= 1;" and "increment ^= 1;" is causing the time difference otherwise both OR and XOR take the same amount of time to run.

In order to construct the infrastructure to transfer gas from Qatar to anywhere you first need security and stability. The route doesn't have any security because of one reason: United States

Iraq was destabilized the day US invaded the country, removed its government that despite all its dictatorship and crimes was keeping Iraq stable and safe, destroyed its infrastructure (pipelines, oil facilities, power plants,...) and military (that could provide security), etc. It kept becoming more destabilized as US spread separatism there and northern Iraq basically claimed independence and has not been answering to the central power in Iraq for years.
Same with Syria, the situation kept getting worse as US kept attacking and expanded its military presence there currently stealing their oil. (I don't see anybody talking about how Syrian oil that US is stealing could be transferred to EU!).
Both countries were destabilized more as Turkey with the help of US waged its war against Kurdish people in the region and started their genocide while interestingly enough never attacking the separatists Kurds in Iraq!
That's not even to mention the US backed terrorists that run rampant in the region.

It depends on what it really means when talk about "regulations". Let me give you two opposite examples.

First is the case in New York some years back. They "regulated" bitcoin businesses by requiring them to sign up for a license that had a lot of restrictions and high taxes. Not only it didn't facilitate mass adoption, it did the opposite by forcing business out of NY.

Second case is in Japan where they accepted bitcoin as a legitimate currency and also removed all taxes from payments made in bitcoin. That helped the bitcoin adoption speed up since businesses were more comfortable to accept bitcoin.
It didn't change anything in adoption of cryptocurrencies aka altcoins though.

As you can see regulation on its own is not good or bad. We have to see this as a case by case basis to figure what kind of effects it is going to have on the bitcoin adoption.

Most probably XOR was used because of consistency since it is used everywhere else. Each round you XOR it with the generator and finally the result is XORed into the constant. Considering that 0 XOR (0 or 1) is the same as 0 OR (0 or 1) it makes no difference either.

Based on what I've noticed in the past, a lot of the investors are actually waiting for the rise to start buying bitcoin not the drop. For example I can assure you even if bitcoin were to drop to $10k today they still wouldn't buy it but if bitcoin were to rise to $30k they would all start panic buying with all the money they have.

This is exactly why we see big jumps each time a major resistance is broken. You mentioned $3700 which was an example of this, when price broke $4k everyone started panic buying and shortly after price was over $10k.

Using block explorers is never safe. For starters they are the enemy of your privacy since they record your activity and link it to your IP and possibly your identity. Additionally many of them have bugs that could be exploited if you are checking validity of a transaction or its confirmation.
You should stick to a trusted wallet that directly connects to the bitcoin network either as a full node or an SPV client connecting to a full node.

This is just as wrong as what OP said. There is no bear market on the horizon either. This is the 4th drop after the rise fails to go above the resistance level and that makes is the 4th time people call for a bear market where it clearly is a sideways market.

What rally are you talking about?
Price is still below $25k and inside the same $5k range that it has been in the past 2 months, going up and down in what clearly is a sideways market.
Besides why are you sticking "crypto" to bitcoin. Shitcoins are still pump and dumping as they have always done.

That means nothing because:

1. Everything is ultra expensive in US. That means manufacturing the simplest thing in US costs a lot more compared to manufacturing the same exact thing elsewhere. For example a single missile in Patriot system that can't shoot shit costs over $3 million! Same with salaries. A quick google search says a US soldier is paid starting from $2944 (that is $500 in Russia).
Same with literary everything else. A kilo of potato costs $1.05 in US but it is $0.4 here. LOL

2. A large part of that budget is wasted on adventures. For example when they fly one of their oldest and most useless planes like B-52 for media coverage it costs a ton of money (roughly $70k per hour). This is money wasted.

3. A large part of that budget is wasted on stupid projects. As Secretary of Defense Esper said, they'd wasted billions of dollars on projects such as the Crusader Mobile Artillery System and Future Combat System, etc. all silly projects created by those who scammed the US military out of billions of dollars.

4. What they build using that money is also proven to be useless. I already mentioned their defense systems like Patriot that are completely useless. Their aircraft is also far behind the technology and are useless against modern air defense systems. Same with their radars, navy, etc.

I agree with this to some extent. US will continue the proxy war with Russia to the last Ukrainian as long as they can. What I'm afraid of is how long is Russia going to tolerate the losses before they start using "other" type of weapons on Ukraine.
I already mentioned US wants to turn Ukraine to Afghanistan for Russia since US was caught in Afghanistan for 20 years and wasted thousands of troops and $7 trillion. I should also mention US at some point used MOAB in Afghanistan in 2017 after being stuck there for 16 years which is 16 years of losing...

I'm curiously watching to see how US is going to deal with the fact that more than 60% of the world is starting a new economic bloc that is not only not going to use USD but also is going to use a new currency among them.
In other words US is going to export its inflation to Europe mainly not the world.

There are some tensions between Russia and the latest members and members to-be of NATO. Namely Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Sweden. Thankfully, so far the tensions are not of a military nature. It just targets their economy.

It is hard to predict.

I thought the tensions there were going down but unfortunately US increased the tensions again.
What we know is that China is not going to accept Taiwan's independence and they will definitely not accept US presence in Taiwan (remember Cuban missile crisis?).
China is also ready for a full scale invasion as they have both warned and ran many simulations and military drills exercising it.
They are also going to run another drill with live rounds in about a hundred kilometers from Taiwan as that US politician visits Taiwan!

Chinese move towards Solomon Islands is also another indication that they are planning for war as this place is very good strategic place. Same role it had in WWII (both sides lost thousands of troops fighting over these islands).

If I had to guess, I'd say there is a 70% chance of invasion.
The analysts I follow believe that there is a 100% chance of invasion but they think it could happen when it gets colder to see what happens to EU with an energy crisis and soaring prices.

That depends on a lot of factors, it is not like all the banks all around the world are freezing all crypto owners' bank accounts. Sometimes it is the country's laws that mandates such things, sometimes it is tax evasion, sometimes it is just the number of transactions and their sizes that raise some red flags and sometimes they are sending or receiving money to places that raise red flags leading to the bank suspending their accounts.

I'd still go with banks if I had to choose between them and stable coins.

You are confusing 2 different concepts.
1. Is to store your coins with custodial services such as centralized exchanges.
This obviously is stupid and nobody should ever do this and if they are doing it right now, they should move their coins from those services out to their own wallets.

2. Is to use centralized services such as exchanges.
This is fine, they are simply providing a service and as long as you are aware of pros and cons of using said services (eg. lack of privacy, high risk of being scammed by the exchange, etc. versus convenient trading, high liquidity, fast trading, etc.) I don't see any problem with using these services or having some coins there during the time you are using them.
This is the main reason why these services exist and would never go out of business.