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dustcoin

Re:San Francisco considers banning cashless Amazon stores on Thursday March 21, 2019 @02:24PM (#19455646)
According to the article, the data the city is using is from 2005. It is likely access has increased in the past 14 years.
This is false information that is commonly repeated. The ships produce more of a particular pollutant, sulfur dioxide (SO2), not CO2. Personal vehicles produce barely any SO2 (gasoline contains no sulfur, diesel contains a small amount) so it isn't surprising a few container ships, which burn sulfur-heavy bunker fuel, produce more.
Re:Top 1% of Income Earners pay 45% of California's Taxes on Friday April 15, 2016 @12:14PM (#11505434)
Using the numbers in this article[1], 1% of the taxpayers make only about 24% of the total income in CA, not 80%.

[1] http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article9349178...

Re:Washington Gives $1.3M in Parking Fines During Snowstorm on Thursday January 28, 2016 @04:10PM (#10991366)
>During snow emergencies, cities should work with parking garages to make overnight parking for cars, free. It'll solve a lot of problems.

DC did in this case. The city warned about the emergency routes ahead of time, offered free parking at metro stations, and worked with private garages to offer $1/day parking.

The noise could be filtered out with enough samples, so this mitigation only increases the number of attempts required and does not prevent the attack.
Re:A New Era at the Tor Project on Monday April 13, 2015 @09:11PM (#9371515)
They have publicly posted financial reports: https://www.torproject.org/about/financials.html.en
Re:Sell in May, and go away? on Friday April 10, 2015 @03:57AM (#9353013)
They are already factoring that in, using a 5% risk-free rate.
Re:Sell in May, and go away? on Thursday April 09, 2015 @05:45PM (#9351260)
The author is claiming 5% is an historical average, which is plausible because in past decades, both interest rates and inflation were much higher.
Re:Sell in May, and go away? on Thursday April 09, 2015 @05:43PM (#9351243)
This analysis is only looking at the price of the S&P 500, not the total return. An investor that sits out half of the year will miss out on about half of the dividends paid, which are always positive.

EDIT: Here is a graph highlighting how important including dividends is: https://i.imgur.com/YZSq6K3.png

Another consideration is taxes. The short-term gains produced by selling after 6 months are taxed at normal income rates (or slightly higher), as is the interest from the "risk free" interest-paying investment held the other 6 months. Long-term capital gains and dividends are taxed at favorable rates.

Re:Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure on Friday March 20, 2015 @07:26PM (#9241274)
Ben Horowitz begins all of his blog posts with rap lyrics: http://www.bhorowitz.com/
Re:I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA on Friday March 20, 2015 @07:20PM (#9241251)
The contributions to a Roth IRA (but not the investment returns) can be withdrawn with no tax penalty, so there isn't much reason not to max it out if possible.

Employees should always contribute to a their 401k at least up to the company match, as it is essentially free money.

Re:All Major Browsers Fall at Pwn2Own Day Two on Friday March 20, 2015 @07:14PM (#9241234)
$250k/yr doesn't allow for $2k/mo more spending than $225k/yr after factoring in federal taxes.

California state income tax is also more than double that of Michigan's at those income levels.

Re:Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure on Friday March 20, 2015 @07:10PM (#9241212)
From my understanding, the $1200 price is for the privilege of getting a dedicated table in the club, not really the bottle of alcohol itself. This is still very expensive, of course.
Re:Send Money to Friends in Messenger on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @06:36PM (#9222114)
They (ab?)use the transaction that occurs when money is refunded to a debit card.

http://jonbwhite.tumblr.com/post/66853226398/how-square-move...

Re:T-Mobile Poland Officially Accepts Bitcoin Top-Ups on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @12:31PM (#9184902)
They are offering a 20% bonus on purchases with BTC. https://inpay.pl/doladowanie-t-mobile-bitcoin/
Re:Coinbase Raises $75M from DFJ Growth, USAA, NYSE, and More on Tuesday January 20, 2015 @01:48PM (#8918635)
Less than 50% of Americans always pay their full balance, around 33% usually or always carry a balance.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/168668/americans-rely-less-credit...

Re:The Bling Dynasty โ€“ The Nouveau Riche in China on Monday January 05, 2015 @10:56PM (#8842846)
The $200M figure is a typo. The article's source lists 64500 people with >= 100M RMB ($16M) in 2013.

http://up.hurun.net/Humaz/201312/20131218145315550.pdf [Page 9]

Re:For Sale: 50,000 Bitcoins on Monday November 17, 2014 @03:18PM (#8620266)
Nothing in that article states that the coins were sold above market price. The only publicly known data points were some significantly below-market bids (<$500 when the market price was ~$600) that did not win.
Re:Making Connections to Facebook More Secure on Friday October 31, 2014 @09:11AM (#8538521)
The url isn't facebookwww? though, it is facebookcorewww?. The additional 4 characters didn't have to be "core", but the fact that it is an english word and relevant adds significant difficulty to your estimates.
Re:Could non-citizens decide the November election? on Monday October 27, 2014 @03:47PM (#8517745)

    A majority of non-citizens in Voter ID states
    self-report that they were required to show photo ID
    (which they could not have had)
Non-citizens can acquire legitimate photo ID (a driver's license, for example).
I assume that the SEC gained access to his exchange accounts' transaction history and discovered that he did indeed lose money trading.
The complaint implies that he lost 64k BTC trading. Based on my observations of pirateat40's behavior and personality during the time he ran the scam, this is a much more likely outcome than him secretly holding on to a large number of BTC. In my opinion, Pirate manipulated the market to feed his own ego, not to make a profit, and incurred large losses buying high to raise the price and selling low to drop it.
From the SEC complaint [1]:

    During the relevant period, Shavers transferred at least 150,649 BTC to
    his personal account at an online BTC currency exchange which,
    among other things, he then sold or used to day-trade 
    (converting BTC to U.S. dollars and vice versa). As a result of this activity, 
    Shavers suffered a net loss from his day-trading,
    but realized net proceeds of $164,758 from his net sales of 86,202 BTC.
It is interesting how little money he actually made from the scam, unless he hid BTC outside of law enforcements' reach.

[1] http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2013/comp-pr2013-13...

Re:How Gangs Took Over Prisons on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @08:34PM (#8333069)
It is misleading to refer to the US prison system as privatized, when the percentage of the total inmates that are in private prisons is only around 3% [1].

Privatized prisons do create a huge moral hazard, but currently the pro-prison groups with the biggest scope and influence are probably police/guard unions [2] and the "tough on crime" crowd.

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/15580530

The owner of the private key corresponding to a bitcoin address can cryptographically sign a message proving they control the address. This functionality is built into most modern bitcoin wallets.
Re:The Satoshi Nakamoto SourceForge account has been hacked on Monday September 08, 2014 @08:40PM (#8288160)
I haven't heard of a single MtGox creditor that has expressed anger towards Satoshi.
Re:Basic Income is Practical Today, Necessary Soon on Friday August 15, 2014 @05:55PM (#8184444)

    >mutual funds
Vanguard offers many low-fee mutual funds.

Non-depreciating: The long-term return of stock indices and some bond indices beats inflation.

Attainable: $1000-$3000 minimum to open an account

Liquid: Funds can be bought or sold easily (with no fee), money is accessible via ACH.

I hope you are not suggesting that gold is a better investment than a diverse portfolio of stocks and bonds.

The corollary to this is that people also have a vested interest in thinking their failure is the product of bad luck or circumstances outside of their control.
Re:Guests refuse to leave Airbnb host's house on Thursday July 24, 2014 @11:56AM (#8080255)
According to another article, http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Squatters-don-t-sit... , it is suspected that the squatter is intentionally running the AC full blast with the windows open.
These jurisdictions likely have special laws regarding contests with prizes. For example: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/09/08/why-many-contes...

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