kirian

it won't have door handles.

that's what Calico is for ;)

I find this ironic this offering - "Bitcoin payments have been disabled for the Humble Book Bundle"

When I heard about this previously I wondered if it's a way of developing tunnel boring technology and expertise that would ultimately be useful on Mars. Underground tunnels and spaces are likely to be useful for a Mars colony and Musk is trying to figure out a way to get someone to fund it here first.

"No diaspora of English nobility, many of whom left rather than become subject to Normans" - do you have any other links or more information about this comment, i.e. which nobles and where did they go? I'm curious to find out more as was not aware of this aspect. Thanks

This the the acronym Seagate uses for solid state hybrid drives - http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/solutions/solid-state-hybrid/

I don't think Backblaze uses any of these so likely they've just pulled a stock photo of a hard drive from somewhere.

A recent article in the Washington Post (Wonkblog) making the case for "Why daylight saving time isn’t as terrible as people think". US centric. The argument uses the data of number of days with "reasonable" sunrise and sunset times based on latitude/longitude when using DST or not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/11/why-d...

The Seagate drives do seem to be improving in reliability though. The higher capacity Seagate drives which I presume are newer models have better failure rate numbers than the lower capacity drives. The 4 and 6TB drives seem to have reasonable failure rates compared to the other manufactures - only HGST is better than Seagate for the 4TB and Seagate 6TB drive has a lower failure rate than the HGST 8TB. FOr >4TB drives the Seagate 6TB has the lowest failure rate.

6TB 1.89% 4TB 2.19/2.99% (depending on model) 3TB 5.1/28.34% (depending on model) 2TB 10.1% 1.5TB 10.16%/23.86% (depending on model)

It's talking about Market Cap.

Pinky and the Brain reference.

"Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight? Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_mPrhwpZ-8

Pinky and Brain are genetically enhanced laboratory mice. In each episode, Brain devises a new plan to take over the world which ultimately ends in failure

How about a Tardigrade - not exactly a complex lifeform but a few steps up from a bacterium. I wonder if these creatures could survive this type of event? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

"Tardigrades can survive in extreme environments. For example, they can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce."

The article suggests there was a worldwide climate shift:

"The scientists noted that, at about the same time that Hunshandake dried out, a major climatic shift was occurring worldwide that caused extraordinary droughts on all of the continents in the Northern Hemisphere. "

Reminds me of this article on the price of Rolex watches and how they have increased as Rolex watches have evolved from a professional tool to a luxury item. http://www.ablogtowatch.com/rolex-prices-past-60-years-revea...

Yes, $5,700 seems a bargain to uncover a flaw like this. Shows an interesting potential use of bitcoin, can act as a warning system to identify bugs or insecure systems, like a honeypot. If the bitcoins are taken you know there is a weakness somewhere.

I donated. It's possible to enter the amount you want to donate, unclick "Be an EFF Member", skip all the "Donor Information" fields, click "donate to EFF" and you are presented with a bitcoin payment address. I wish they would just list an address that I could send a payment to rather than go through that rigmarole. But good to see that EFF are accepting bitcoin again.

My point is that fiat money systems have costs associated with them. I'm not arguing that the costs change if there is Quantitative easing or not.

Central banks and central bankers don't work for free. How much is spent on normal banking infrastructure, cash security vans, fraud protection etc.

What are the already-known polynomial time attacks on the protocol? do you have any links? thanks

A slightly related article I read recently about how should we evaluate the claims of people much smarter than ourselves. i.e. in this specific article the example is if Krugman makes some claim about economics should we just accept them as he is probably leagues ahead in terms of knowledge and expierience in the subject.

http://theumlaut.com/2013/03/13/paul-krugman-is-brilliant-bu...

from http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4154500/mt-gox-barons-of-bi... "Karpeles bought the site in 2011 from its founder, Jed McCaleb, also known for developing the infamous video-sharing site eDonkey. McCaleb originally started Mt. Gox as an exchange for Magic: The Gathering playing cards, which explains its odd name, but his growing interest in Bitcoin soon surpassed his affinity for Magic. Seeing the need for a central exchange where users could match buy and sell orders, he converted Mt. Gox to a Bitcoin exchange in 2010."

Well that sucks. One of my most used/visited apps/sites. Maybe Yahoo should build a reader. Could be a good fit for them.

Maybe bitinstant.com

On BitPay site: https://bitpay.com/amazon

Or maybe something like this drone delivery network: http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567193-...

See this StackExchange answer for an answer to this question: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5617/why-are-bitc...

Some issues with "useful" computational work is that it needs to be computationally easy to verify the result (a hash function is but other work may not be), also it may not be crptographically strong so someone could come up with some method to solve the problems much more efficiently than others and make the network insecure.

Reports of it going live:

http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/01/the-first-bitcoin-as...

Yeah, according to http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ the 30 day monthly volume of Vircurex was just over $200 http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/vcxUSD.html

I have to agree, I was trying to work out how the odds are calculated and it makes no sense. Why not copy what Betfair or Intrade or something like that do.