Much thanks for replies. I feel like I learned some things.  Does anyone know what the drawback is prohibiting blocks with compressed data? .Zip compression can usually reduce a file to around 1/3rd its size. I'm sure someone has thought of compressing data in blocks to fit 3MB of data into a 1MB block, without having to change block size. Is it not worth it, in terms of additional validation & resource consumption, in compressing/decompressing data from genesis blocks onwards to current day transactions? |
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Are there breakdowns or benchmarks which give an idea of how much faster a 2MB, 8MB or 20MB block size might be over current block size? What if a 20MB blocksize only increased transactions to 10 per second.  It would be nice to have some idea of how many transactions per second a block size increase would yield. |
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There is much discussion on the topic of block size. What is lacking in these talks is hard data. Benchmarks, evidence, testing which conclusively demonstrate block size makes a difference in transactions. The block size debate is a loose equivalent to debates geeks had in past years where some believed increasing RAM on a PC could make a big improvement in performance, while others held the opposing view; increasing RAM wouldn't make a noticeable difference in most cases. The block size debate is like Intel vs AMD all over again. We have benchmarks and testing that can quantify to a reasonable degree how Intel and AMD processors stack up against each other. Where are benchmarks showing bitcoin unlimited or segwit have a legitimate claim to better transaction speed via increasing block size? |
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Several days after shares of Canada's TD Bank tumbled following reports that its employees were engaging in practices similar to those which led to a major scandal at Wells Fargo, which cost CEO John Stumpf his job and led to bonus clawbacks and numerous terminations over the practice of "cross-selling", employees from all five of Canada's big banks have flooded CBC's "Go Public" whistleblower hotline with stories of how they too feel pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers to meet unrealistic sales targets and keep their jobs.
In nearly 1,000 emails, employees from RBC, BMO, CIBC, TD and Scotiabank locations across Canada describe the pressures to hit targets that are monitored weekly, daily and in some cases hourly. "Management is down your throat all the time," said a Scotiabank financial adviser. "They want you to hit your numbers and it doesn't matter how."
The deluge is fuelling multiple calls for a parliamentary inquiry similar to that which followed the Wells Fargo revelations, even as the banks claim they're acting in customers' best interests, CBC reported, adding it has agreed to protect their identities because the workers are concerned about current and future employment.
An RBC teller from Thunder Bay, Ont., said even when customers don't need or want anything, "we need to upgrade their Visa card, increase their Visa limits or get them to open up a credit line." "It's not what's important to our clients anymore," she said. "The bank wants more and more money. And it's leading everyone into debt."
A CIBC teller said, "I am expected to aggressively sell products, especially Visa. Hit those targets, who cares if it's hurting customers."
A financial services manager who left BMO in Calgary two months ago said he quit after having a full-blown panic attack in his branch manager's office as she threatened to stifle his banking career because he hadn't met sales targets. "It was like the only thing they cared about at BMO," he said. "If you weren't selling, you weren't worth having around."
He claims his manager once told him not to tell clients who wanted to invest more than $40,000 that the markets were down, because putting their money into GICs wouldn't earn the branch as much sales revenue.
He said she also told him to attach high interest rates on mortgages and lines of credit and to not tell clients those interest rates are negotiable. He said he was "pressured to lie and cheat customers," but refused to do it.
As CBC adds, the revelations about other banks came pouring in after Go Public revealed last week that front-line staff at TD were under pressure to sell customers products and services they may not need and that some employees were breaking the law to hit their sales revenue targets. Those stories, experts say, prompted the largest drop in TD Bank shares since the financial market downturn of 2009. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-15/we-are-all-doing-it-thousands-candian-bankers-admit-lying-customers-boost-salesBanking is fast becoming a predatory industry rife with unethical practices aimed at boosting profits by the misery and suffering of people. Could cancelling bank accounts or boycotting banks be reasonable reactions to these types of practices? What are everyone's thoughts on this? |
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Blocksize debate is an optimization issue.
Its a reaction to the question of how to make bitcoin code run faster and execute more transactions.
Increasing block size is like adding more RAM to your computer. In some cases you might notice an improvement. In other cases, it will make no difference whatsoever.
Whether block size makes a difference or not depends on where the bottleneck in the BTC transaction software is.
Those who support larger block sizes assume the bottleneck in BTC transactions is the size of blocks which store transaction data.
I've never heard of anyone attempting to prove or disprove this. The way to optimize issues like transaction speed is to profile code to breakdown execution flow.
I've haven't been paying much attention to say I'm up on everything. But that seems like the most neglected area.
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This is essentially a remote crash vunerability in BTU. Most versions of Bitcoin Unlimited(and Classic on a quick check) have this bug. With a crafted XTHIN request, any node running XTHIN can be remotely crashed. If Bitcoin Unlimited was a predominant client, this is a vulnerability that would have left the entire network open to being crashed. Almost all Bitcoin Unlimited nodes live now have this bug. To be explicitly clear, just by making a request on the peer-to-peer network, this could be used to crash any XTHIN node with this bug. Any business could have been shutdown mid-transaction, an exchange in the middle of a high volume trading period, a miner in the course of operating could be attacked in this manner. The network could have in total been brought down. Major businesses could have been brought grinding to a halt. How many bugs, screw ups, and irrational arguments do people have to see before they realize how unsafe BTU is? If you run a Bitcoin Unlimited node, shut it down now. If you don't you present a threat to the network. EDIT: Here is the line in main.cpp requiring asserts be active for a live build. This was incorrectly claimed to only apply to debug builds. This is being added simply to clarify that is not the case. (Please do not flame the person who claimed this, he admitted he was in the wrong. He stated something he believed was correct and did not continue insisting it was so when presented with evidence. Be civil with those who interact with you in a civil way.) https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zdkv3/bitcoin_unlimited_remote_exploit_crash/Doesn't look good for bitcoin unlimited. Imagine what would have happened if this exploit had been released later & if all the BU supporters could have moved their bitcoin to BU. All their btc would be worthless now. |
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With investments, it could help to develop some type of financial plan or business model before committing to something.
Once details are fleshed out, its much easier to compare different investments and business plans.
$25 could be a decent investment. There are people who buy seeds with less than $25 and grow $200 worth of vegetables.
I've made 16 times my initial bankroll gambling on sports in previous years. That would be like $25 to $400
But always those types of big winning streaks are followed by big losing streaks.
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The value of paper money is closely linked to the balance sheet of the state issuing paper money.
The more a government goes into debt, the less the paper money is worth.
In these times of growing deficit and debt, it seems the value of paper money is destined to diminish.
Bitcoin could ultimately prove to be more stable and better at keeping value as mounting deficit puts the value of paper currencies through the floor.
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The process of oil extraction involves obtaining oil near to the surface that is easiest to reach, first.
Gradually the difficulty of extracting oil increases, similar to how bitcoin mining difficulty increases over time.
Eventually we reach a point where it requires more energy to extract and refine oil than the oil is worth.
The key here is "peak oil".
Peak oil describes the height of oil extraction and production that the oil industry can potentially reach.
After that, we face decreased production for the reminder of human history.
Whether or not we've reached a point of peak oil is open to debate.
In terms of long term oil, the value of oil is likely to increase past peak oil.
But past that point we may face diminishing returns as the oil becomes more expensive and difficult to extract & refine which complicates matters.
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If world war 3 happens, I suspect we could be using goats, chickens and cows as currency. Like people did 2,000 years ago. That's what I think about when I see politicians and media telling people they need war with russia, or another country. I don't understand what any of us gain from war.  |
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 How you managed to make 5 or 6 logical errors in 4 sentences is baffling. Needless to say, what one pool does doesn't dictate what the network as a whole will do. What one pool does, dictates (to a large degree) what the network as a whole will do, when said network(antpool) is one of the largest in the world and comprises a very large percentage of transactions. Ok. Let's see your comeback to that, mr. "logical errors".  |
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Price manipulation is an old topic people have been agonizing over in stock markets for centuries.
#FakeNews is a common method of manipulating stock market prices.
#RealNews also has a powerful effect.
Those are probably the two main methods utilized.
This also applies to bitcoin in a sense. Announcements like the SEC denying the bitcoin ETF have a powerful effect on valuation.
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I ask myself: would there be a fork if money wasn't involved?
The answer to that, seems to be: no.
Forks done for profiteering or political purposes could be illegitimate.
I wonder sometimes if many of the bitcoin forks are motivated by greed.
The same with all these people coming out claiming to be Satoshi.
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#Brexit is looking better everyday.
I hope people realize, the EU follows the directives of international bankers & globalists who desire a one world government, as centralized state makes it easier to control, monitor and oppress humanity.
If the EU did its job, they wouldn't waste precious tax dollars on surveillance programs which produce no tangible benefits for average, ordinary, people.
Instead, they would put those tax dollars to work, creating jobs & boost the economy.
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This could be Makwan Amirkhani's first fight since he moved to train with Conor McGregor, Artem Lobov & others out of SBG Ireland.
It'll be interesting to see how much of a difference that changes makes, if any.
Gunnar Nelson also trains part time at SBG Ireland.
I like how the UFC is giving many hometown fighters a chance to fight on their native country.
Or at least near to their regional geographic area.
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There's an old school of thought that says: "banking is supposed to be boring".
It theorizes "banks should be stable & stability is boring".
And "if banking isn't boring, its not being done correctly".
All of this could apply to banks and the 2008 economic crisis, where banks tried to make exciting profits & sacrificed our economic stability to do it.
One might say, there is value in stability not only in banks but possibly also in bitcoin.
And bitcoin could be popular being stable as gold has.
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Money represents time and work.
If you have say $1,000 that represents a certain quantity of time and effort(productivity).
One might say OP's question is asking where a person's time and hard work can be best spent.
That comes down to weighing different opportunities & figuring out which appears the best.
To really figure out which is best requires creating some type of detailed financial plan.
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What are the threats for financial system from bitcoin?
There aren't any. Bitcoin isn't likely to replace fiat or compete with banks in student loan or house/car loan markets. Bitcoin also isn't likely to be used in healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, tourism, pornography nor any of the big global markets of the world. If anything bitcoin will have a positive effect on financial systems by giving them incentive to mirror or exceed bitcoin's stability & growth. |
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"Everyone should have a bank account" sounds like pro banker monopoly propaganda to me.
The 2008 economic crisis showed that already have too much power and influence in the world.
Why would we want to give them greater power and influence?
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