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Due to the fact that he was privy to confidential information at one time, his entire book would've had to have been submitted to the US DOJ/ intelligence communities in order to be looked over. Due to him not following this law (I'm not saying I support it or not) they're attempting to sue him for the proceeds from his memoir.
Just so you guys know, and don't have to read a hackernews article!
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Probably Xi Jinping for me. Second place would be Putin. The reason being they are both in control of very powerful countries, and they are both intelligent and know what they are doing. This is why I'd put Trump further down the list. He's only in charge because Putin wanted him there.
Putin I would put ahead of Xi Jinping, were it not for the fact that China is more powerful than Russia.
This literally isn't true in the least. This is something that liberals like to say, but it's not something which is true in the least. It was shown in multiple reports that Putins goal was to sow division in the US, not to put a certain candidate into the office. I'm not sure whether this is true or not, I've certainly heard the speculation, but I would agree that Trump isn't intelligent enough to be the world's most powerful leader. I suppose it does all come down to the definition of powerful, which obviously can be taken in many ways. If it is in terms of influence, then I would agree the Chinese leader is #1. China's activities in the South China Sea alone are quite astonishing. So I would say Xi is #1 for me too, with the qualification that really whoever is in charge of China would take the top spot, whether it's Xi or someone else. For the record, Trump is intelligent. He may seem like a bafoon on twitter and when he talks sometimes, but I would throw most of this up to the personality that he's taken up as POTUS. You can't be a dumb person and make the amount of money that he made in his lifetime, and command the amount of respect among people as well. He also won the presidency through a hostile takeover of the GOP -- so yeah, not an idiot. |
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You can't actually tell me that you think this is the correct thing to do. There's no way that every charity and private business is going to have someone on staff to be able to check over their bitcoin address at all times, and convert it to USD(or their local currency) manually each time. That's impossible, and it's going to have a large amount of volatility.
Plus the fact that you're paying another person on staff to be doing this (if you're a busy company) Back when I was running my inc., we had an accountant and we could ask him to do these types of things. You can use bots such as bitcoinsavings bot on telegram to warn you when there is a transaction in your account. All you need to do is enter your public address to it. So, you are already paying someone for keeping your books, he does checking that stuff and selling bitcoin at the end of the day, or every two days or something. Volatility is no problem these days because everyone is expecting bitcoin price to increase. According to @hodlnout, in the last 24 hours, the block time decreased to 7.5 minutes, as opposed to the usual 10 minutes, which means the miners are working real hard. That means they must be thinking they want that bitcoin reward bad. Here is the source for the hash rate increase: https://twitter.com/hodlonaut/status/1171941018696114176?s=20So pretty much what you're saying is that as a company you would pay an accountant (I'm using US market rates for the next part of this) $150-200 an hour to check for your bitcoin payments and ensure that all of that is done? What's the cost savings in using BTC for that. It would make the most sense for someone to use a service like bitpay -- which converts it to USD and charges a very small fee, as they charge 1 percent, which is already lower than CC merchants who are in the realm of 2-3 percent for transcations. Plus you're not going to have any issues with chargebacks or anything along those lines. Advocating for people to just post their address or to use something that just accepts bitcoin as payment and doesn't convert completely misses the point. Businesses need USD -- they're unable to pay for their bills in bitcoin (I don't care if some random German dunkin donuts is now accepting bitcoin) They can't pay the electric bill, the gas/oil bill, they can't pay for internet, and anything else in bitcoin. We're missing the mark COMPLETELY if we're just telling businesses to accept bitcoin and end it there. You either get all of the people that they have to pay onboard as well, or they use a service like bitpay, OR they don't use any of these at all. |
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I believe it was a conspiracy.
It is so difficult in a country like the US to let an airplane fly so low in a place with so many skyscrappers around.
Everything seems so wrong in this story, in a country with so many security levels...
Now it seems like something that would never happen. When it happened though, there had been no real safety features on a plane. The doors to the cockpit weren't locked, barely any screening at airports, no air marshals, no large scale intelligence at airports to be looking for this sort of behavior. If we look at it from a lens of today, one that is pretty much relying on all of the intelligence we have today and the security features it's going to be hard for you to see it happening. But it did happen, its' not a conspiracy theory. Two planes hit the WTC. One hit the pentagon, and another was going for the White House and it was taken over by the people on board. What else is there to know about it? |
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This is without a doubt right. As we continue to care more and more about tests and quizzes, we put more emphasis on memorization rather then learning. Teachers are now forced to teach for a test, instead of teaching the material itself and ensuring that their students are learning - instead of memorization (which is the lowest form of learning and knowledge) Anyone can learn to reguritage information on request if they stare at it and practice it for long enough. It's a different story to apply the information learned. That's the true test of learning, and it's something that is never taught in this day and age. |
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WSJ has finally come out with something that all of us already knew. Amazon has been rigging their search algorithms to benefit their own products. This isn't surprising, and it's something that most (if not all of us) have already noted is happening. Though now we know to the degree that it actually happens. So here we go. If you are to search for something along the lines of 'mens button down shirts' or 'paper towels' a large amount of the products that will be shown to you are products that are owned by Amazon through a private label brand. That's not something that is shown to you, as they are displayed alongside the likes of other brands. All of this is happening while the EU is currently looking into this very issue, and they're seeing if there is anything wrong with a company owning a marketplace and selling products on that very marketplace . I'm assuming they're looking at this under an antitrust lens, as Amazon also controls about 37 percent of all online sales. Here is the WSJ article as well - https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345?mod=hp_lead_pos5This is not surprising at all as anyone who’s ever shopped from Amazon would have noticed it, the only thing I’m surprised is that the EU was silent for so many years about this issue. In my personal opinion if Amazon wishes to sell on it’s own platform then they should not rig the results, as this practice is unfair to all traders who sell on Amazon. What do you’ll think will happen now will the EU will fine them, or compel them to improve the mechanism of how products are displayed to a user. Eh I mean there's this very weird balance between them attempting to show that their products might be better than others, and themselves literally rigging the 'vote' towards themself. What I mean here is lets just say that Amazon products were to get to the top naturally, people would continue to say that these products have been pushed up by Amazons actions. I don't know what exactly the EU is going to call this as well, due to the fact that any company should kinda have autonomy on their own platform. It's like any supermarket selling store brand products. Maybe the issue here is that Amazon isn't always displaying that it is store brand. Though stores do this as well, by buying a brand (or starting one) and selling products under this brand. Though as the EU is very consumer oriented, they'll most likely fine them and Amazon will continue to do as they please. It's more profitable to be fined rather then to change. |
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I haven't yet decided what I think really happened. It's hard to tell. I can never help but think that these things might be false flag attacks, but in this case it really could've been Iran and/or Yemeni groups (who the Saudis have been massacring) as US intelligence claims.
So far, I was impressed by Trump's moderate response: "The Saudis want very much for us to protect them, but I say, well, [...] that was an attack on Saudi Arabia, that wasn't an attack on us," "I'm not looking to get into new conflict," & "I don't want war with anyone." Sometimes he becomes super hawkish overnight, though, so we'll see how it goes.
The only reason I think this can't be the Yemeni groups is due to the amount of precision present in these strikes. And the location of the strikes themself. Just by looking at where the strikes are on each item, it looks as if the missiles came from Iran/Iraq area. There are some intelligence experts stating that this could still be Yemeni groups, but they would've had to increase their tech drastically since their last attack on the Saudi airport. |
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All MSM outlets are in a dying business model. Cable TV as we know it gets less and less relevant every year. As the boomers and gen x's become worm food you will see the MSM loose relevancy year after year.
ALL MSM outlets are biased by their profit motive, they all suck.
+1 Media outlets are going to have to go into other business models, or they're going to die. You either go into the other media business - such as something like Fox does, or Disney or something along those lines, or you're slowly going to die. There's no reason for these companies to really be relevant. The only thing that keeps them going is that they propagate news to the masses, and owning them is a massive weapon in the right hands. Patriotic Investors should start focusing their investments into the Mainstream News Media and Silicon Valley tech companies. Those sectors have been dominated by Liberal Investors, Arab Investors, and Chinese Investors for so many years. Time for hostile takeover It's a waste of money for someone to be a 'patriotic investor' and there's no such reason to do that in the least. All investors should have the same goal, growth. If you want to attempt to take these companies down, you show what they've done wrong and you convince people not to watch them anymore to take a dent out of their profits that way. Share price is not something that directly hurts a company anyway. |
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WSJ has finally come out with something that all of us already knew. Amazon has been rigging their search algorithms to benefit their own products. This isn't surprising, and it's something that most (if not all of us) have already noted is happening. Though now we know to the degree that it actually happens. So here we go. If you are to search for something along the lines of 'mens button down shirts' or 'paper towels' a large amount of the products that will be shown to you are products that are owned by Amazon through a private label brand. That's not something that is shown to you, as they are displayed alongside the likes of other brands. All of this is happening while the EU is currently looking into this very issue, and they're seeing if there is anything wrong with a company owning a marketplace and selling products on that very marketplace . I'm assuming they're looking at this under an antitrust lens, as Amazon also controls about 37 percent of all online sales. Here is the WSJ article as well - https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345?mod=hp_lead_pos5 |
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It isn't immigration that is the problem. Many countries such as the US and the Uk, have benefited, and become richer, through controlled immigration policies. The problems start when immigrants attempt to change the culture, laws and social practices of the host country. If you are going to move to a new country, then please respect the heritage of that country, and don't try to turn it into an inferior version of your birth country.
This is an issue in a way yes, but it's not something which is horrible if the people of the nation who are changing aren't unhappy with the changes. As immigrants who arrived to America in the 1900's and onwards had changed the US, and the people back then may not have liked it, but we're better off due to these changes. The real issue in my mind (and I would hope everyone elses) is illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants, abusing our services and failing to pay taxes is something that is going to forever hurt the US if we're alllowing it to happen unchecked due to many reasons that people cite. Some people say that we need these workers for certain fields, such as cleaning, farming, manual labor such as laborers, and so on and so forth. I think a grea tradeoff in this situation is to stop paying people off the books, and PAY AMERICANS (OR AT LEAST IMMIGRANTS ON A VISA) at least the min wage. |
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Anyone who supports the injection of poisons and disease into healthy babies should be locked up. Anyone who does minimal research into the working of the human immune system will realise how evil this action is.
This isn't poison though. These are tried and tested vaccines that are meant to protect people in society. This isn't a conspiracy theory relating to people being injected with stuff that will be tracking them at all times. This is the reason that people freak out because of statements like this -- statements that aren't true in the least, and ones that scare people into thinking that the vaccines are killing them. |
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I would 'feel' like voting with my feet and getting the hell out of country before having a kid.
In fact, I DID do exactly that. Forced vaccination programs in 'the land of the free' are on the near-term horizon and they are, I feel, enough of a probability and enough of a threat to get out.
When Trump showed his true colors on a number of issues, and especially the vaccine issue, and showed that he had no interest in or inclination towards going against the wishes of his masters in spite of all his campaign trail bullshit, I bailed. Trump('s minders) used almost pure data analytics for his talking points and PR campaigns and these bear no relationship to his policies or priorities. Trump's owners are the driving force behind the vaccination programs and the gun confiscation programs. 5G is another. There are 'certain reasons' for these priorities.
People assume, for no valid reason, that vaccines are the same everywhere. They are not. In some 'regions' making people stupid and sterile is a priority. In other 'regions' getting half the kids taking prescription pharmaceuticals is a priority since these populations have wealth to extract and it will be easier to sell communism when everyone has a need that they cannot meet without state help. Namely un-affordable health care...but that only works on people who are sick.
I've put a lot of hard-core research (meaning reading dense scientific studies) and thought into the subject of vaccinations, but there also an element of 'gut instinct' on my part. My 'gut instinct' has paid off for me in the past.
In this situation though, we're not talking about a country that has gone rogue and is attempting eugneics on its people We're talking about a country of compassionate people and laws. One that is attempting to protect the population through the use of vaccines. The only reason someone shoud be given an exemption is for medical reason, and ONLY medical reasons relating to the side effects that it could cause to you in particular. |
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I mean there is an issue of certain people having issues with these vaccines. Not issues with the vaccine itself, as everyone obviously wants to be safe from disease. But the side effects are what could cause a real issue -- that's the problem.
There are certain side effects that only a certain portion of the population will have. We should have to weigh this option as apart of our decision making if we want to see if this is worth it.
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We are living in the best period known to man!
I would think most civilizations get better as they get older. We are very close to our peak though, and will be descending rapidly. Most civlizations are at their peak most of the time though. If you are to look at the stock market at any point in history, most of the time you're going to be at all time highs and that isn't a reason for the civilization to crash. It could be time for a recession -- yes, where things are corrected. But crashing just for the sake of nothing -- not going to happen when innovation is the norm now. And that's where growth comes from. |
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All MSM outlets are in a dying business model. Cable TV as we know it gets less and less relevant every year. As the boomers and gen x's become worm food you will see the MSM loose relevancy year after year.
ALL MSM outlets are biased by their profit motive, they all suck.
+1 Media outlets are going to have to go into other business models, or they're going to die. You either go into the other media business - such as something like Fox does, or Disney or something along those lines, or you're slowly going to die. There's no reason for these companies to really be relevant. The only thing that keeps them going is that they propagate news to the masses, and owning them is a massive weapon in the right hands. |
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If you'd been watching the news though, you'd think that there is more violence in the world, more poverty, incomes going down, and so on and so forth.
People don't understand that sadness sells, good times don't sell for the news.
Thanks for the charts and such, this is very helpful!
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I think this is something that most knew already, but what's the alternative of using bitpay? Going ahead and using a direct pay to bitcoin and having to live with the volatility present? That's not something that any company, any charity, or anyone that is accepting monetary payment is going to want to accept.
Bitpay may have its flaws yes, but I don't see any alternatives that are willing to bear the risk that bitpay does. Or anyone that is developing an alternative that works.
How about accepting bitcoin donations using your own private keys and public address? You can then sell it as soon as it reaches a certain amount. Then you do not have to deal with a middle man. You can immediately sell your bitcoin in an exchange, and it will be fine and dandy. Bitcoin has been going sideways anyways. Not that I have anything to do with them, but you can also use coinbase commerce. Check out this link and feel free to send me a tip, at least I will know if it works  https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/3c738b0e-7c8c-4a88-ae0e-7ec49c03a28eIf you are a large company or a charity, then you probably have an accountant or accountants. Press people should have that due to the corporations they work for. I ran an Inc. in the past and we could ask our accountant to do anything for the companies we were advising/helping. You can even provide an exchange address to people to send in bitcoin, if you are too iffy to use your own address, but I think your wallet with your private keys would be safer. Anyways, back some time ago there were news about a man in London accepting his salary in bitcoin. If one man can do it, you can do it too, and a charity organization can find some people to help them with accepting bitcoin to their address as opposed to bitpay:  Earlier this year cryptocurrency firm CoinCorner decided that - if they wanted - staff could choose to take their salaries in Bitcoins instead of pounds and pence.
Zakk Lakin decided to do just that - and have his entire salary paid in Bitcoin.
After CoinCorner said the staff could take some - or all - their pay in cryptocurrency, Zakk leaped straight in, choosing to have 100% of his salary paid in Bitcoin.
And the software developer, who lives on the Isle of Man, said he's managing fine.
"People always ask how I am coping with living on Bitcoin, but the truth is that my lifestyle hasn’t really changed," the 24-year-old told Mirror Money.
"Buying things with crypto is easier than people think - there are many online merchants that accept Bitcoin and I use them to buy what I need throughout the month - everything from tech-related items such as Raspberry Pi products or cooking equipment from Amazon (yes, there are ways to buy things from Amazon with crypto!)"
Of course, not everything can be bought with Bitcoin. But that doesn't put Zakk off.
"At the moment I convert all of my permanent outgoings (such as rent, direct debits, etc) to GBP on payday to avoid any issues around the Bitcoin price movements and then the rest is left for disposable income/savings," he told Mirror Money.
Zakk has the advantage that - working for a coin exchange- he doesn't have to pay a fee to swap his Bitcoin into pounds and pence.
But even then it takes a few hours to get access to his cash if he needs pounds to spend though.
"Over time I believe we’ll begin to see more retail companies like restaurants and petrol stations introducing Bitcoin payments, and this will mean I can spend less in fiat and more in Bitcoin," Zakk said.  But for Zakk, it's about more than just paying for things.
"As a young techie in the Bitcoin industry, I feel it’s important to not only contribute to the network by running my own node, but to actually use Bitcoin for its original intention as electronic cash.
"On top of it all, the conversations it creates are always worth it for spreading awareness and educating others about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency." Sources for quotes and the images: https://twitter.com/BitCoinBanka/status/1172031884311900160?s=20https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/man-explains-chose-take-entire-18984194You can't actually tell me that you think this is the correct thing to do. There's no way that every charity and private business is going to have someone on staff to be able to check over their bitcoin address at all times, and convert it to USD(or their local currency) manually each time. That's impossible, and it's going to have a large amount of volatility. Plus the fact that you're paying another person on staff to be doing this (if you're a busy company) |
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Well, gonna make money right?  Unless they are bringing things into school that actually allows the kids to learn "tech", then everything else is snake oil. IMHO all they need is a large projecter and a tablet each student loaded with the lessons. And PC of course if they're going to be taught programming. I wouldn't mind them spending a bit more for materials if they're teaching robotics. That can get quite expensive. IMHO those two, programming and robotics is the tech that should be taught to kids. But then again that's expecting much, of course those kids have to grow up into consumers rather than producers.  Yup. Google classroom right now is free for every school that wants to use it. People are like -- oh google is so great they care about education --> Google doesn't give a shit about education, they care about making a buck and they've suckered every kid into using the google ecosystem. They're all going to be consumers for LIFE. This is even more relevant now with the entire scandal about Youtube (run by Google/Alphabet) collecting children's information, for which they were slapped a paltry $170M fine. (Decided to look up the exact amount, obviously no result shows when searching via Chrome). I can only imagine the same thing has happened with Google Classroom. Oh yeah. Google has now noticed that if they open up some amazing platform like Google Classroom, pay off some teachers/administrators (which they've done) to market google products at their district, they're going to get kids hooked on google from a young age. But not just google browser. These kids are going to be used to using google drive, google docs, google sheets, gmail, google photos and so on and so forth. These kids are going to only know the apple ecosystem so when they get to the age where they're going to be buying products google is going to have them within their grip. I hate to say it, but this is a major amazing investment by google to lock people down for a very long period of time. It's an astonishingly smart move by smart people. |
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In the US, sometimes Presidents will ask a collection of cabinet members (or anyone that they can hire and fire as they please) for their resignation and then they'll pick who they want to allow to resign. Resigning would, in theory, allow for someone to collect benefits if they're eligible instead of just being fired. Plus there is much more decency in just resigning instead of being fired.
Take Preet Bharara as an example. Trumps DOJ, when they first came in, asked some federal attorneys for their resignations. Preet had been one of them, and he failed to give in his resignation. He was then terminated.
Thanks a lot! So that's something specific to cabinet members, if you're a random worker you don't have to wait for your boss to accept your resignation? I wouldn't say its specific to cabinet members, nor the President. Your boss could ask for your resignation if you've been there for 10 years and you're eligible for a pension, or healthcare in retirement. And instead of fighting it and being fired, you could accept whatever your job is giving you to walk away -- instead of having to be fired and losing all of this (if you had done something wrong on the job) But I know that it is most typically cited as being done in politics. As you want a team of people below you who support your cause. |
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A letter of resignation is not effective unless accepted. Some bosses get a letter of resignation on the first day of hire, and hold on to it until they want to execute it.
What? Non-US here, how the hell does that work? If you want to resign and your boss refuses you're supposed to continue working? Oo Bolton is known for being a hawk and supporting regime change in Iran, North Korea, etc
IMO he was just using him to keep the hawks off balance and satiated like they had an in for a while.
Again, non US here, what does hawk mean? Both wikipedia and linguee agree on the fact that it's a bird but I guess it's also English slang for something else, anyone could give me a small definition? Hawk means that someone who supports war, someone who wants would much rather use military force and threats rather down diplomacy. Doves would be the opposite. In the US, sometimes Presidents will ask a collection of cabinet members (or anyone that they can hire and fire as they please) for their resignation and then they'll pick who they want to allow to resign. Resigning would, in theory, allow for someone to collect benefits if they're eligible instead of just being fired. Plus there is much more decency in just resigning instead of being fired. Take Preet Bharara as an example. Trumps DOJ, when they first came in, asked some federal attorneys for their resignations. Preet had been one of them, and he failed to give in his resignation. He was then terminated. |
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