Yeah that makes sense. I wonder if miners are selling older machines that will never see a +ve ROI (cutting their losses), or selling newer machines for a profit (making money on early pre-orders). I also wonder if some are upgrading their machines to newer models?


Well the graph shows that the network speed is increasing exponentially, so no, the whole mining game won't collapse. What will happen eventually (as has been discussed a lot) is that some miners with higher costs will drop out, slowing/reversing difficulty, until an equilibrium is reached.

Well they must be getting bought by other miners then, how else do you explain the exponential graph?

This cat got into bitcoin in 2010 

Dank, is that you? Easy on the acid man!

Yes, I visit that site every now and again just to see how deep the mess is.

His opinion was that both the US and the UK were still in a lot of trouble, but that the UK was in a deeper mess as it is primarily a consuming country, whereas the US produces more and is being helped by it's recent move to more self-sufficient energy.

Basically, both economies are still struggling, but the UK will struggle more to repay its debts unless it changes its tactics of too much mortgage lending and not enough business lending.

The talk was entitled "Have we fixed the mess – are the rich economies of the West mended?" and was very interesting, I thought the guy was a great public speaker.

Some main points he covered:

• How the UK economy is appearing to begin to recover, but is relying too much on mortgage debt and services, rather than actual productivity  and manufacture.
• Hence, the UK government debt will be harder to pay back than the debt of other countries (like Japan, as although Japan's gov debt is much greater, they have much higher levels of productivity).
• How China's production levels have dropped massively, and they have amassed $15 trillion of debt since 2008 (more than the GDP of the entire USA).
• The idea that the failure of the Eurozone to recover quickly has taken the spotlight off the UK's poor recovery.
• The idea that some banks may soon become "Too Big to Save" i.e. taxpayers money would not be enough to bail them out if they failed.
• How the recovery in the USA is actually a lot more promising than in the UK (more productivity, becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy due to shale gas).

plus a lot of other points I can't remember off the top of my head... His opinion is basically that the UK, although showing signs of recovery, has a long way to go...

I was lucky enough to exchange a few words with him about Bitcoin, or more specifically the technology behind it and whether he thought it would gain adoption in the future. He basically said he thought the whole idea was very interesting, and that this sort of "ultra free market" would probably be the future of financial systems, whether it takes 10/20/30 years. He seemed to think it was an elegant technology, "free from the unwieldy infrastructure of the current banking system".

I would have liked to ask him a few more things, like what he thought specifically of the deflationary/fixed money supply aspect, the idea of a distributed public ledger, the frictionless transfers, and whether he saw the current Bitcoin network as more of a payment system/a store of value/neither. But he was being asked loads of stuff by other people and looked pretty tired!

Anyway, seemed like a nice guy, and took time to really answer peoples questions thoughtfully (he didn't just reel off lines like a lot of politicians would). I would recommend seeing him speak if you ever get the chance

Ah yes apologies, I reread your post and I think I get what you meant now!

I am guilty of often taking threads like these a bit seriously 

Jesus, the launch control on that Godzilla GTR must feel like you're about to go into orbit

They are very nice looking cars, the GTRs, especially in matte black. Lot of car for the money too...

Oh my god, thanks for that, you made my day 

I'm still not quite sure that that whole forum isn't an Onion-style hoax though bahahaa!

I haven't fully read Revelation, but I think I know the gist of it. It's to do with the 7 angels with 7 plagues, and an apocalyptic scenario where Satan is destroyed, along with everyone who doesn't have faith in God. Something like that, right?

Shame he hasn't done anything about it yet, your God seems to be taking his time.

Anyway, I don't see how you can just quote the Bible as evidence for anything at all, seeing as it was written by hundreds of people a mere couple of thousand years ago.

What if I believe in the religious writings of Ancient Egypt: According to the Book of the Dead, when we die we are transported to Osiris's realm of the "Duat", where we must pass a series of brutal tests involving supernatural monsters, before we are led into the final test by Anubis. Here, our hearts are weighed against the goddess Maat (the heart represents the weight of our sins). If the scales balance, we get to go into the afterlife. But if not, then our heart is devoured by another deity, Ammit, ending our journey into the afterlife prematurely. 

Now that sounds ridiculous, right? But this Egyptian text (one of the more modern texts incidentally) is well over 3000 years old. The book of Revelation is less than 2000 years old. Why would you not believe the older text, and put so much faith in the newer one?

Answer: It's because you were taught that the Bible was truth when you were younger, but were not taught that the Egyptian writings were the truth. (correct me if I'm wrong)

Neither have any evidence that they are true or false, so please stop quoting one text (the bible) as truth when anyone could quote any other religious text as an alternate truth.

Also, re: Noah's Ark (and the Bible in general tbh), how do you explain that there absolutely no references to any creatures/entities that weren't known of at the time (eg subatomic particles/viruses/bacteria/colossal squid/dinosaurs/megalodons/pluto/asteroid belt/exoplanets/galaxies/white dwarves/radiation etc. etc.). It seems that there would be at least the tiniest thing in there somewhere, if everything had been created.

Bit of a coincidence that everything that god created was already known about by humans, no?

Why doesn't God just destroy Satan? God is all-powerful and omnipresent after all.

Maybe he doesn't want to kill/fight fire with fire. But he was happy to send his only son down to earth to get crucified.

If he really has influence on humankind, surely he would stop all the suffering and create some sort of new planet for us all to live on in peace.

Or maybe he's just not real, and was made up by people, due to their previous lack of knowledge about physics and the universe. I know which explanation I believe.

Back to the Evo vs ID debate, yes it would be nice if there were MORE evidence backing the evolutionary theory (same as any other scientific theory - It can never be proven totally 100%) But the evidence we do have is surely better than the evidence of ID, which is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I know which one I'd bet my bitcoins on.

We would start to see sonic weapons of unimaginable proportions:

http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/07/loudest-subwoofers-in-the-world/

One of these is a 60" sub capable of producing 188 dB and over 6,000 lbs of linear force 

If this were deployed, there'd be blood and shit everywhere...

I've always been a fan of boxy-styled cars, unfortunately never been able to afford one. Yet.

Lancia Delta Integrale Evo II:

:

Audi Quattro (understeering like a boss :



Lotus Esprit Essex Turbo:



And course the Golf GTI Mk 1: (This might be more within my price range, still £2500 plus for a good condition model though)

One of my favourite fossils, I remember reading about it 20 years ago when I was a kid. Since then, a lot more evidence has surfaced to suggest today's birds are distant relatives of dinosaurs - likely that they are related to the very few small dinosaurs that escaped the extinction event.

I agree with everything you said about "Why Protesting and Voting Don’t Bring Change". I haven't voted for many years because I understand that it makes very little difference if your views are outside the status quo, and because I think most MPs are the scum of the earth.

However, I recently had a very enlightening conversation with a politically minded friend, which changed my outlook.

I now think that until we have a significant number of people with similar views, not voting at all is counterproductive.

This is because there is a majority of voters that will always vote for the politically right-wing parties (I'm in the UK, so the main right-wing parties are the Conservatives and UKIP). The voters for these parties tend to be very traditional and will exercise their vote without fail.

Many of the people that don't vote have more liberal views, this means that by not voting for the most forward-thinking left-wing parties they are giving more power to the right-wing voters, thereby increasing the chance that the Tories or UKIP will become more influential.

I have decided to exercise my vote in the next election (not because I think any of the candidates will be any good, but because I'd prefer less influence from dumb right-wing parties in Parliament).

I suppose I'm looking at the system like a game - I will be voting not for the party/MP I most agree with, but for the one that will be more likely to beat the Tories or UKIP.

Hopefully in a few years there will be some better options, we can but dream... 

So It's a waste of time to call people out on misinformation?

If this thread had been advocating neo-naziism and ethnic cleansing would it still be a waste of time to not show full support?

I thought the idea of threads like these, was to get opinions and facts from all sides of the discussion, so people can get a more balanced view; due to the "filter search bubble", more and more people seem to get their information skewed and all from similar sources, rather than seeing the whole picture. This ted talk is well worth a watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

I make a point of using "duckduckgo" or similar when I'm investigating issues such as these.

PS if you were trolling, then well done, you got me 

I've come to the conclusion that he is a bot funded and developed by infowars.com 

Well it's statistically more likely than 99% of the content on infowars, right?

 

Source? And I don't mean a youtube video where a person says this, I mean a real, reputable source.

I'm aware of Bill Gates' comments re: world population and that his grandfather was into eugenics. That doesn't make him a eugenicist. And it certainly doesn't mean that there is a conspiracy whereby Gates/Monsanto are cultivating GM crops to purposefully cause sterilization in any group of people.

Yes, he has invested heavily in sterilization and contraception programmes, as he believes (quite rightly IMO) that the world population is rising uncontrollably. His comments about population control are often taken out of context. For example, he said:

"Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that [world population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent”

He does not mean that vaccines will kill off 10-15% of people (they would not be very good vaccines if they killed people rather than saving them). His opinion is that saving more children will cause many people in poor countries to give birth to LESS children, as their children will be far more likely to live until adulthood.

It is a well known fact that currently, poor countries have a much higher birth rate than developed countries.


Anyway, back on topic, here is a really informative article trying to look at both sides of the GMO debate, it's worth a read whether you're pro or anti GMO:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-genetically-modified-food/

A couple of quotes from the article:



Ever heard of "Golden Rice"? This is a genetically modified strain of rice which contains large amounts of vitamin A. Millions in poor countries die and go blind from vitamin A deficiency every year, so some clever people thought they'd make GM rice to try to help these people cheaply and effectively.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24515938

Unfortunately, anti-GM activists (like Greenpeace) have spread so much misinformation regarding this strain of rice, that crops are readily destroyed by locals, as they believe that they are dangerous. There has been no scientific evidence to show this, but groups like Greenpeace seem to think they know better.

Again, I don't like the idea that huge multinational corporations like Monsanto are so powerful that they can basically do what they want, filing patents and planting crops with no regard for local farmers etc.  And I think they do need to be careful with issues like cross-pollination.

But this idea that GM crops are inherently dangerous simply hasn't been proven - there is overwhelming evidence that they are safe.

And this idea that GM crops are part of some kind of global sterilization conspiracy is laughable - please show some real evidence for this if you can.

By the way, I try to eat as much organic, locally sourced food as I can. I think it generally tastes better and I like to support local farmers, even if it does cost me a bit more, and I don't like the idea of too many pesticides being used as it can affect the local eco-system, and supports huge chemical companies. But on the other hand I have no problems whatsoever with eating GM food. I have found that shitty processed food (like cheap white bread, and crap burgers/pizza/"meat") doesn't seem to agree with me, but this is down to how the food is manufactured and processed, not whether it contains GMO or not.