My country isn't paying pharma a cent so we can't care less for that. If it works and can be replicated, it will. What, is Trump going to invade? He has been threatening during all his administration but did nothing, useless bluffer.

Naturally we are good friends with Russia and China and we expected the first vaccines to come from them. Putin went a bit ahead.

Technically the search for a vaccine started in China around Jan (maybe Dec), so its not 3~4 months but 7~8. It might be that Putin rushed it, but the Chinese are going to come with something soon, India will copy it too; one way or the other we are getting a vaccine just hope it has little or no nasty side effects.

Natural immunity is great for the 3/4 of people that survive it. You might want to gamble it, but most people won't. In fact it has been like that nearly all human history (natural selection); people would die from diseases their bodies couldn't fight on their own. A vaccine is a weakened version of the virus so your body can synthesize this "natural immunity" without killing you.

Also the virus has existed before we identified it, mostly because it was in another species (ie. Bats). As with things in the universe, just because we are currently unaware of them, doesn't mean they haven't been there "forever".

Just sell them on ebay or equivalent. There is people who can reuse those chips or repair the boards for spares. I know a person who bought many "damaged" S9 boards for scraps and got at least half of them working again, most came from the US, and yes, they ended in my "third world" country where the electricity is too cheap for our own good...

Ironically we used to be a "rich" country in the 70ies. Leave the money to politicians to ruin your lives...

Yes, i know s9k and s9se are the garbage dump of the last (clearing) s9 chips for Bitmain. Even to this day, S9, S9j and S9i are going strong over here.

Its not going to happen, at least not with people you don't implicitly trust in the first place. The danger of double spending isn't worth it. Indeed LN could be a solution, or simply pay in advance, sort of opening a credit/tab with the merchant/shop whatever.

I don't agree with promoting these as it will encourage scammers and people will blame it on Bitcoin.

Because gold has been traded for thousands of years, while bitcoin has existed only for 11. Like gold, bitcoin production is declining; unlike gold, it is with absolute certainty that no new sources will ever be found.

And, unlike gold, your gov cannot seize it from you, like the USA gov did for most of the 20th century.

You say "lose" but you seem to forgot it just "gained" $2000. On the other hand, there is also the thing you are comparing it against, the USD, is also going up and down as well... And, the politicians can duplicate and triplicate the number of existing USD overnight, while nobody can ever do that to bitcoin or gold.

A covid-19 infected person uses the phone, then you use it. There, you are now infected. Scientifically proven: saliva sticking in surfaces where you put your mouth and then inhaling it transmits this (and other) virus(es).

Granted, you need an infected person to use the phone first. It also works with any phone, including a turned off smartphone...

This is as solid as the flat earthers theories. Or what the perennial deniers and vaccine scare mongers always repeat like parrots.

The "waves" used by 5g are the same as those used by 4g. It does fancier subdivision, and even build ad hoc local networks (meshed possibly?) but other than that its meh. We are surrounded and penetrated by waves unless you live inside a faraday cage. Not only you get radiation from local cell towers, but from space, all over the place, in all frequencies humans transmit, which is pretty much all of them...

It is unhealthy to live and sleep next to the transmitter, duh. Make sure that antenna isn't in your patio or garage (yeah, i know a house not too far from here with an actual cell tower mast in its garage, i guess the money to the owner of that house is indispensable; plus the coverage is an abyss when you are right next to it).

5g can also use higher frequencies, those penetrate easier, but reach much less. Just like wifi 2.4ghz vs 5ghz and the higher harmonics. Ku, Ka, etc, etc.

If you are paranoid about 5g and waves in general, build your own faraday cage and live inside it. Problem solved.

Excellent, it so happens that my country is in good relation with Putin. Should it come from USA or UK, we would not see a pint of it until next year, if ever. And Trump wouldn't allow export of it anyway.

China also has 3 vaccines in testing, but i guess Russia rushed it (first post lol), Putin went so far as to place his own daughter at risk...

Did you know that, if you wait for a dam to fill up to the top, it will destroy it and anything downstream?

When they open the floodgates is because the water level is getting too high. Dam 101 i guess. i can understand if you place doesn't have one of those you might ignore their operation details.

Nothing they would love more than to keep as much water as possible, for the dry season. But in the rainy season there is no helping it, you just cannot let the water destroy everything, so you release it before it becomes an even worse problem.

This has nothing to do with an "evil scheme" to intentionally destroy the poor villages downstream. It is how dams operate.

And yes, a dam, especially a large one, does irreversibly intervene the land. The artificial lake created for this, submerged countless villages and fields, permanently. While the ones downstream have to live similarly to a river that sometimes grows and sometimes doesn't, not too different to how it was before the dam was erected in place.

And 3 gorges isn't the only large dam China operates...

Just like Bitcoin, Bittorrent has some sort of reputation. But what you say isn't all there is, just like Bitcoin isn't used solely for "dark web" deals. I has been widely used for Free and Open Source distribution, several Linux distros release using this protocol. Also has been used in high profile cases such as game updates (World of Warcraft among others, IIRC).

Bittorrent is a highly efficient decentralized transfer protocol, it excels in delivering popular content to infinite people at the same time, compared to centralized methods with finite bandwidth capacity. If you need to distribute something many people would want that your servers simply can't ever cope with, use Bittorrent.

Yes, of course media content would be an obvious case use, as long as its popular. It isn't so well suited for rare content almost nobody wants.

Of course, a key factor is that the content delivered is identical for everyone, so drmed content isn't well suited for it (since they make it different to each customer to track it). So that model isn't going to work.

Donations can already be made using Bitcoin. In fact, an anonymous donation will always net far more money to the content creator, than using a typical commercial channel. Ie: a small tip to your favorite singer, gives him/her far more than you buying their CD (often the labels don't give them anything, so they only get money from touring or selling t-shirts etc). It is part of the disease of the old system. Something similar happens with movies.

I think the best thing artists and producers can do, it put a donation address. In the long run, they are probably getting far more that way than spending money in system destined to be defeated anyway, or chasing people in countries their lawyers can't reach.

Crowdsourcing has also been a very interesting model for content creation, why depend on views/seats/sales when the whole thing could be paid in advance?

It might be interesting to do "something" regarding a torrent, but i guess simply adding a donation address in the torrent info would do. However they could do the same thing in the main page where you are getting to torrent from in the first place, and its not like people couldn't just undo the official torrent and make a new one with THEIR address instead, which is even worse.

Some corporate guys don't like Bitcoin, but they love the buzzword blockchain, because its "cool", while Bitcoin is scary...

But as others have said, a blockchain alone is "a solution in search of a problem". It could be fitted to some use cases, here and there, but its no universal database replacement. Without the rest of its elements, its nearly pointless.

This is why i don't buy this "blockchain" parlance to those guys who won't mention Bitcoin to not scare their bosses.

What if you have a blockchain running in a single node? You are losing nearly all the advantages of Bitcoin, might as well use a traditional database.

Es que la legislación sencillamente no se acopla con la realidad técnica, y es cuesta arriba que los políticos lo entiendan. Es cierto, las carteras en realidad son solo "juegos de llaves", los bitcoin no están en ninguna parte pero están en todos lados (donde existen nodos). No es que se lleven encima, literalmente, pues no hace falta. Cuando se porta una tarjeta de crédito, ¿se lleva encima el dinero? No es la analogía ideal, pero supongo que podría acercarnos. O hacer un cheque, que sin llenar, son solo papeles en blanco sin valor alguno.

¿Será una permuta? ¿Será como dar algo de valor a cambio de la propiedad? Viéndose no como dinero, ¿sino como algo distinto? ¿Y podrá demostrar el origen de como se adquirió ese valor? Aparte de los impuestos, a los Estados les interesa evitar la legitimación de capital; que para mi criterio puede hacerse a través de la minería aunque con el pasar del tiempo cada ves menos (junto al declive de la minería como negocio rentable).

Pongo un ejemplo: Compro S9s usadas en el mercado, las pongo a minar el mes (en mi país) que lleva recuperar la inversión, y las vendo además de salir con los bitcoin producidos para comprar la propiedad en España... Espero que no estén los políticos de siempre tomando notas

O diversificar y tener mitad y mitad. Pero no es igual tener algún papel o documento digital que certifica que posees oro, a poseer el oro directamente...

El oro tiene muchas desventajas, y varias ventajas. Su naturaleza física es tanto útil para cuando no hay energía pero peligrosa pues te hace blanco del crimen, además de que pesa y se puede decomisar, etc.

Bitcoin está en "la nube" (blockchain), y siempre estará ahí. Te puedes mover a cualquier parte sin declarar nada y siempre podrás moverlos.

Dado que Bitcoin nació en 2009 podría considerarse algo de milenials, pero realmente hay personas que esperaron por algo así por mucho tiempo, y finalmente salió algo lo suficientemente robusto como para poder decir, al fin.

El oro es oro, pero oye, que hasta para comprar y vender arriesgas la vida. No es que no hay peligro con Bitcoin, pero es en otra escala completamente distinta.

Fascinante. pero suicida. Atacar servidores de compañías estadounidenses, estando dentro de Estados Unidos, ya de por si es suicida. Por supuesto hay adolescentes que sencillamente no aguantan la emoción, supongo. Pero mas que una broma pasaron al tema de estafar y eso de meterse con personas con tanto dinero es que no iban a terminar nada bien.

Tal vez pensaron que no podrían ser descubiertos, que las agencias de espionaje de su propio país no tenían la capacidad de encontrarlos...

No se si harán un "ejemplo" con ellos, o cuantos años de sus vidas pasaran tras las rejas.

Cualquiera pensaría que eran perpetradores Rusos, o Chinos o de Corea del Norte, Irán, algo así, un país de esos sin tratado de extradición o cooperación con los americanos. Pero es que ha sido desde dentro del propio territorio.

WHO has reported at least 6 Vaccines going human trials, 3 of them Chinese, one is Russian, i suppose there is one American and one from UK. I even read some news about Peru using something from Llamas...

The race for a vaccine and better drugs to treat started in January, and they guestimated at least a year, but given the urgency i'd say they really made progress, it also helped the sharing of info which tends to go against big pharma interests.

Originally the idea behind isolation was for people to contain the virus until proper medicine was available, but many couldn't just remain isolated, helping the virus spread. The virus exploited human weakness to socialize, and has claimed nearly a million lives.

It definitely isn't lasting forever, or actually it may, but won't harm much when everyone gets immune by surviving it or getting the vaccine.

BTW there is a new nasty virus in China but it spreads from ticks biting humans it seams; troublesome for those handling animals i guess.

There is also reason to believe the virus was spreading even before Dec 2019, but Wuhan had the place able to detect it.

You should download a proper password manager like KeepassXC (Free and Open Source) and let that generate your passwords. Never trust online generators, or proprietary software for that matter.

How do you know such an online generator isn't saving it for some private database or giving it to some agency?

My current internet connection is such a piece of garbage that i have gone back to offline games. Currently I'm playing Dungeon Keeper, since i never played it back in the day. I tend to like sand box games like the Sims 3 or "simulated" stuff like Kerbal Space Program. Recently i also found entertaining a free game called Endless Sky, which is yet another space trader like 2d game.

The range of quality for Chinese products goes from cheap and disposable up to expensive indistinguishable from certain brands in terms of quality. Obviously, the cheaper stuff tends to be known more, since its what people aims for more often than not.

The reason is simple: They do manufacture for the expensive brands as well. So they CAN, and DO sell expensive quality things as well. Well, usually the expensive stuff is still cheaper than the quality brands anyway, but not as cheap as the really cheap stuff.

Ideally people would have a choice, but often do not, unless they buy direct and already know what they are buying.

There are also shameless merchants that buy the cheap things and try to sell it like the good quality brands (and often imitating the brand name too).

The truth is, it depends in what you buy. Just because its made in China doesn't mean that is automatically crap.

For example i have a cheap Huawei cdma "feature" (not smart) phone from 2007, i just wanted something basic back then. Surprisingly, it still works, with the original battery which is mad. Sure its charge doesn't hold long nowdays, but its disturbingly working even after 13 whole years. I remember having a couple of similar Siemens phones die on me like 2~3 years after being in use. I also has some Samsung i bought after that didn't last even 4 years, one day it went off to never turn back on again, just like the Siemens. Of course i know people whose smartphones weren't so great. Also i have some Phillips led lamps that have been going for a decade with nearly daily 8hrs+ continuous use, while the more recent Chinese led bulbs i had already one die on my under a year. Of course the Phillips was like $60 while the Chinese isn't even $3.

I know for a fact that in the 70ies-80ies Japan had a similar reputation, but unlike China they never wanted to make cheap disposable stuff and currently their products are among the best. And yet what they sell in Japan is on a whole different level, than the same thing they sell abroad. It is also possible to see certain Chinese things sold in China being better than the (nearly) same thing exported.

Most of the "expensive" brands literally manufacture things abroad, often China, or Vietnam or similar poor country where they can pay miserable wages. In theory branded products have a better quality control, but that doesn't mean you cannot find a simillar quality product from a Chinese brand.

Well it should be fixed. Carefully plan when how to execute it, and do it. No need to leave baggage to the future generations; "i won't be here" is no excuse for leaving unfixed things that could be fixed.

Or, do you think those Roman bridge builders though their creation should crumble by the time they died? Many are still in use today, couple thousand years later... And that was before modern construction techniques and materials (they did invent concrete, more or less).

There is time to plan it, but there is no reason to ignore it. Same as the quantum resistant changes.

When you make a cold wallet, by writing 12 words in a paper with your own hands, i have mentioned many times that you should make a copy (again with your own hands, no electricity) so that you have two papers with the same 12 words you store securely at two physically separate locations.

Please stop the talk about private key because while the seed words internally recreate it, you are not directly handling a private key, nor should you ever do it due to the security implications. Never handle private keys directly, stick to the 12 words, and protect them well.

As for the Beirut case, sadly it is yet another case of State bureaucracy. Apparently these hazardous materials have been stored for many years and across at least 4 administrations. Of course, some official designated that specific area for all flammable materials, so it was all conveniently places together (fireworks, nitrate ammonia, etc). All it took was one lousy wielding or spark igniting some fume or who knows.

You'd be surprised at how common this is in many countries: State bureaucracy plus less than stellar practices. You people in the "first" world wouldn't even know how often we gamble our lives everyday just by getting born in the wrong place. I'm sure most people in Lebanon didn't even know such dangerous things were concentrated there.

So it happens they had this port for everything related to agriculture, all that grain stored, and no doubt this nitrate was meant for fertilizing purposes. Ironically this country has had plenty to worry about with its neighbor having the largest military power of the region plus insurgency stirring things all the time.

ALWAYS stock on non perishable goods, especially when there is no reason, so that you have it when the reason comes and avoid the rush of everybody else trying to procure the same things at outrageous prices or simply going out of stock.

By the time the reason comes, it will be too late. Never count on disasters to send you an advance notice. Yes, same as keeping your savings in USD rather than BTC, once it falls, you won't have a chance to exchange, you are already poor, thank your politicians.