Yeah, it's a important thing. Or, I did adress this in my post up top -
you can turn off lots of stuff, but it still surely gathers it, right? I mean, it's just not displayed for the user.
So, it doesn't truly do much to turn it off I fear

but it might be helpful as a "wake up call" to get a summary of one's google activity..
although it leaves much out, like location tracking on phones and such 

a couple of comments and it's difficult to adress everything. some useful links which is great, but it does still leave the main question unanswered!
I personally don't participate in enough bounties (facebook, twitter all those things) so it'd be difficult for me to make a spreadsheet.
but if someone cared to, it'd just need to sign up for say all bounties that starts within the next 7 days, then see how many pays out and how many doesn't.
although some doesn't pay out for a few months, so we'd have to wait a good while for the statistics I guess! 

You're definitely right! I never really calculated that part in.
However, I have to add something to this:
facebook, google, all their data collection stuff: it's too "shady".
we can disable facebook, but we can never leave? (can't delete account permanently).
it's never clearly told, what exactly they are doing with our data. "oh we're using it for personalizing ads". right.

it's naive to believe that is all, and as an example in the thread start about the Windows "terms of use", they intentionally make it difficult to clearly understand what the data is being used to.

I'd "lay down my sword" in this fight if I could completely and entirely and irrevokably(no data backup), disable and delete all type of tracking related to me.
I can still see ads on google and facebook, just not personalized for me. is that such a big problem?
it could be an "opt-out" type thing, the majority of people still would be part of their monetization program.
They'd still earn money "by me" due to me still seeings ads.

an example is, you can "pause" google's data gathering, such as "dont have video history", "dont give me personalized ads" and so on,
same (iirc) with some of facebook's stuff..

but does anyone genuinely believe this actually does anything except not display the data?
it's still being gathered, no doubt. not a single doubt in my mind that it's all actively gathered.

if I could be 100% convinced that google and facebook and windows and all the other services, completely stop analysing me - then I'd be fine with their privacy intrustions, aslong as it's a CHOICE to give them data.
I don't care if Google can't give me as relevant youtube videos or google links, that's an OK expense for this.

I mean, how many people do you think actually know even 10% of what data is being gathered and what it can be used for?
here, on this forum, people are still, at the very least slightly above average of a regular computer user(since bitcoin isn't "every day life" for most people).
so it seems like we could assume we know a little bit more, and I still admit I know next to nothing of the depth of our data use (and I've still been doing programming and general computer things for a long time, not an expert tho).

If we could get it black on white, what these big corporations actually do, I'm sure people would leave.
That's all I want - if we are told the truth and can choose, I don't mind then if everyone except me still wants to use these services.


sorry, my post sounds a bit .. repetetive.

Are you saying there'd be a correlation between the end of the worldcup and bitcoin's price?

If it's dropping, that means there's less being bought than sold, how can that mean there's someone accumulating more?
when it stops dropping that's when people are buying!  

but it's probably some rich people who can dump so much btc that we drop 10% in 10 minutes and then they can just buy back and repeat as we've seen the past weeks, same thing every time  

incase anyone reads this far back in the thread, i wrote a long post about wallet stuff if you want to look: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3576100

$6k is last november's price, so it has still steadily grown from an overall view.
next june, will we have a thread like this saying "$20k was last november's price"? 

I don't think fear has so much to do about it more that it is a bad business model  to receive currency that can lower in price, so it's safer to just convert it.
however, instantly converting it also means that it's never a huge dump, it's just small amounts being sold constantly, but the selling impact should definitely negligible.

I think it's a few good points but there are many other important things to consider! I wrote a thread about this before, if anyone reads here in the thread maybe they'll benefit from reading my thread aswell, it's too much text to just paste it all here, so the link is: here.

analysing icos properly really brings down the risk level so it's important to do it well! 

Does anyone else have any suggestions? 

hmm your link there does seem to be something of what I mean! not exactly tho,

that's not what I mean!

I'm more talking about general information of how many bounties pay out, how many don't, - just on average, maybe joining all bounties that starts this week,
and just keep track of which ones pay out, how many didn't pay out, how many got cancelled (thus all bounty work useless) etc

who drew the graphics for that whitepaper, is it cool to have the random stuff in the text and an unaligned background? 
Is Triton a guy? 

to be fair, alot of projects use avatars for some reason, but not to even name any names.. big red flag!

that's not what I'm talking about - there's so many threads lately where someone just posts a medium link.
it's very unecessary since a thread with a link doesn't get much attention, at least not in the long term.
so if we had some thread listing all relevant links, just like the bitcoin intro, forum intro etc, it'd make more sense, if the links were categorized in there.

Sadly I'm not very competent in terms of judging the technical aspect he's bringing up, but it also seems like it's a very biased view in some way?
Saying something is too easy to 'screw up' and 'too difficult to secure', in what regards? any reference of some situation?
I've myself seen a few contracts done poorly which led to bad issues, but it's just a bit stupid to say it like that I think.
It's a powerful tool but difficult to weld, basically? just all the more reason to make sure whoever handles it is competent and we get some standards (i guess like that math safe library? not sure) which would make it better in the future. it's still in an early stage, smart contracts development I mean.

this is just as futile as placing one's hope in the "chinese new year", "wall street bankers' bonuses" etc 

Currently, it's not a very good time to invest, unless you're going directly fiat->ico..
if you've been holding btc for a while and seen the price drop, you'll basically freeze your btc at this current price and miss out on the next uptrend.
a perfect time to invest holdings would've been in january, say the ICO finished today, you'd have avoided the entire crash.

regarding the 300% drop, that's likely due to large private sales, where some people get to buy in for a far lower price than what you end up paying.
I wrote a thread about analysing ICOs that includes this, I suggest reading it and maybe if you have anything to add, post a comment 

Isn't the point of decentralization to be trustless?

There's already plenty of sites that values ICOs on various aspects, icobench is one.
they judge things like the team, idea, and such.

if people don't do their own research, they might end up joining a bad ico, and well, there's not much of regulation here yet, and it's likely they'll never see their money again if they join a bad ico.
it's a bit of darwinism, people who give out their private keys or doesn't take fundamental steps in protecting their crypto - they lose it.
same for those who simply fall into the ico scams saying "1000% in one week!".

sure, there's some legit-looking icos that even a critical person could fall for, but that's in a way part of the game, sadly.
aslong as the team exists, looks real - real names and such - they'd be risking much by straight out scamming.
however, dumping coins early and not clearly outlining the path of the project, is in some way illegal I'm sure(to manipulate the price?)
but there's waaay too many small crypto projects going on for anyone to properly stop that I think.

And beyond icobench(and other sites like that), a good sign in general is for example AmaZix - if they're present, they've investigated and judged the project to be safe,
as they don't want their name to go with a scam.
CoinMetro which is an exchange (not yet launched) will also have an ICO platform which will make both participating, and also launching, ICOs much easier - and safer.
(they take pride in being the first, or best or something - in terms of legal adoption).

worth mentioning is that I wrote a thread here for analyzing icos before choosing them, maybe you have some input for that  

it's how like the vast majority of bounties created here on this forum, never seem to reach any such site as icobench, yet everyone rushes to join those bounties, and are never paid, or the projects die.
this whole ICO wave is a bit too new, soon it'll probably get regulated and to participate in an ICO you have to send in blabla legal documents etc, any serious project already demands KYC..
so, you might wish for safety, but at what cost?

maybe we could get some kind of index going instead of all these threads linking to various articles.. 

It's also important to consider the project leader(s) I think, they could have a great and experienced team of programmers, but someone usually needs to be in control making each aspect of a project work as expected..
otherwise, it might end like REQ(great programmers, not so much team leading?  )

How would society function without a government, in theory?
Is it full capitalism where people with money can afford to pay for things such as health care, roads around their area etc?
with no taxes at all, everyone 'pools' together money in their areas to get what they need(a bit like gated communities?)

How would countries work together politically to reach goals? or is crypto the road to 'NWO'?