aback

More elegant: leak the OS build itself, so that the specific attack vector they warned about comes to pass.

What is the incentive to mine the real estate blockchain? Does it pay out a free house every 10 minutes?

or even venus

"You'll see why 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four." - Apple, 1984.

No true scotsman, indeed.

Counterargument: "No true Christian" could ever kill an enemy - Jesus was clear in this: turn the other cheek, die on the cross if need be, forgive 70 times 7 times, etc. In my sect, Christianity is totally pacifist. All true Christians are pacifists.

So there's no reason for any Muslim to harbor any enmity against any Christians, because no Christians have ever once harmed a Muslim (by my definition of Christians).

...

And so we're back to square one, arguing over who's really a Scotsman....

Which "America" is the one that benefits from secrecy?

America depends on an informed populace in order to guide its representative government.

Feed the population lies and hide secrets, and break democracy.

I think he's arguing that government's power to destroy big companies is only as strong as the popular distaste for those companies.

A company like Apple, which is practically an icon of "everything America still gets right," would be a very politically dangerous target to go after.

I have long agreed with this theory.

There's a reason why the right is like that IMO, and it gets down to this diagram:

http://33.media.tumblr.com/e1aaee07d8101970433020eee016ff9b/...

It is my opinion that people naturally care mostly about themselves, then the people closest to them, and less about people on the other side of the world. It is also my opinion (referring to the diagram) that the closer you are to being the person with the "need", the more effectively and efficiently you can address the need.

So in general, a person is best able to help themselves, less able to help the people closest to them, and even less able to help others. This can be envisioned as rings of concentric circles, where each larger circle represents more and more people, but less and less sphere of influence or ability to understand the "needs".

Along with that goes trust. The closer you are to someone (literally and figuratively) the more trust you will have. So these concentric rings are also rings of trust. I can count on my wife to be there for me when it's time to have my butt wiped. You, who I've never met, probably won't even offer help out. When my BFF tells me something, I automatically believe it, because after 30 years, AFAIK he's never lied to me. When a stranger on the street tells me something, I'm hard-pressed to even pay attention.

So if someone is close to you, then not only can you assess / relate to that person's needs, but you can also trust that person not to abuse your generosity.

So in a family or among close friends, communism (from each according to ability, to each according to need) is usually the norm and usually works fine. What's mine is yours. Mi casa es su casa. I know you, you know me, we won't hurt each other.

But in the world, capitalism / plutocracy / might makes right is the norm. As distasteful as it is, and as much as I understand that the people on the other side of the world desperately need my money, I'm much more inclined to give it to my wife, or friend, because I have far more trust that it will be used effectively and efficiently. And I have to also consider that, being someone very foreign to me, that you might be hostile to me, and use my generosity against me. So sorry, if I don't know you, you're on your own.

That's why I like to call myself a "micro communist" and "macro capitalist."

Now in reality of course I offer kindness to strangers because I'm not a sociopath.

But let's be honest: the kindness I show a homeless man (a dollar or two, or a meal) is not the kindness I show my wife or child (my kidney, my home, my life).

That's interesting.

IANAL but seems like you're missing something.

Apple can simply let Employee B take Employee A's place after A quits. When the authorities come for B, B can quit, and Apple can re-hire A.

Apple never has to comply.

I hope Apple finds a compromise where they can help get this specific data without risking leaking a compromised OS.

I want pharmaceuticals without side effects, and real doughnuts that don't make you fat.

Seriously, you are asking for "A" and "not-A" in one sentence. Take your pick. Are you willing to get this one phone unlocked so badly that you would be OK with nobody having security? Because that's what you're asking for, whether you realize it or not.

would only load and execute on the SUBJECT DEVICE

You're wrong because any image that can be installed on the SUBJECT DEVICE can be modified to be installed on OTHER DEVICES.

Fighting will probably impact the bottom line.

As in, improve it.

Tim Cook is probably more popular than Obama (and surely is WRT this issue.) Apple is about a thousand times more popular than the NSA and blessed with almost infinitely deep pockets and a very, very good marketing team.

Not to mention the fact that most of the people who use computers and phones don't even live in the USA.

Yes, the Founding Fathers of the USA probably were considered terrorists, and they talked an awful lot about freedom.

I know it requires Tim Cook to be willing to martyr himself, but do we really see Obama whisking the CEO of Apple Computer off to Guantanamo or some supermax prison?

I'd maybe call the bluff, and take my political stand.

That's actually a good idea if you don't need too much extra horsepower. You get a good keyboard, an acceptable display, and a lightweight machine for a don't-care-if-you-drop-it price.

All third-generation programming languages (and higher) are leaky abstractions. Why is C++ worse than others?

Unless your intent is to quite literally put 100% of Bitcoin full nodes in datacenters

It is a fallacy to think that unless people can run nodes on dial-up in basements, the Bitcoin network has failed in its mission.

Thousands of nodes running in data centers all over the world can provide a scalable, fault-tolerant, censorship-resistant, decentralized relay network.

Those who have to account for their productivity (like devs) are probably in short supply.

Those who do not have to account for their productivity (like managers, accountants, and marketers) are probably in excess.

when people argue that "digital distribution is essentially free," then ask why Soundcloud is losing money, since distributing music is literally their only real cost of doing business.

we will continue to endure substantial cultural losses for so long as people continue to believe that content can & should be distributed and consumed for free.

ultimately some sort of micropayments + blockchain-like-cloudserving might replace Spotify, Soundcloud, and all other streaming services with a decentralized system in which listeners compensate artists directly.

until then the promise of disintermediation is just a fantasy. gatekeepers on the Internet control access to most content, particularly music.

Also:

Imagine you're a bank calculating the interest rate to offer on a loan. Do you think that rate will be lower or higher if you believe there are circumstances wherein the government would unilaterally forgive your bad debts if your customer defaults?

First off, the numbers I cited were not theoretical, they were the observed network run rate at the time I posted.

Secondly, Bitcoin doesn't have to scale up to Visa levels, at least not in 2016. In 2016, it just has to scale up. And there's plenty of room to scale up.

Bitcoin has a growth plan that subsidizes the expansion of the network (via inflation and adoption) for many more decades. In two decades, the Moore's Law equivalent of a 1MB block size is a 16GB block size. Even without additional scalability, Bitcoin can process a lot of transactions with 16GB blocks.

Also craigslist.org.

That site looks like 1995 called and wants its web page back. It's a triumph of non-engineering.

But that network effect. Man oh man.

Hmm. When technology basically took away musicians's ability to sell digital music files, the world pretty much said, "figure out a new way to sell music."

So, "figure out a new way to advertise." Welcome to disruption.

There is no level of hash calculations that is acceptable.

Well that's just unreasonable. Do you have any earthly idea how much CO2 the current banking system expends?

The problem with basing a money on something that has value, is that changes in perception of the value of the thing, result in changes in prices across the economy.

Say gold is the currency base. Now we discover Alzheimer's can be cured with a medicine that requires a lot of gold in the processing, and the price of gold skyrockets. That causes the price of everything else (priced in gold) to plummet.

However, I think a compelling case can be made that the amount of hashpower being used to secure Bitcoin is overkill for the measly 3tps that the network is currently capable of. If the same hashpower was used to secure 100X more transactions, it wouldn't seem like such a waste of resources.

The cost to secure the system is orthogonal to the cost of processing transactions and rises and lowers proportional to coin price, providing a level of security commensurate with the market value of the thing secured.

The cost per transaction is simply a function of the rate limiter that is attached to Bitcoin. Bitcoin could secure many more transactions per second if the rate limiter was removed.

a measly 100k transactions

As I type this the network is averaging ~12000 txns per hour, or 288,000 per day, FWIW.

There's not much room for "casual observer C development." For the rest of the world, that's why we have Erlang.

lmaoed at that one

Of course proof of work has always been used to decide consensus parameters. It's just tuat no controversial changes / failures to change have ever been put to the vote.

As long as the changes are non controversial then miners and nodes simply act at a rubber stamp. But it's unrealistic to think no important issues will be controversial.

If consensus changes arent up for CPU vote, then you tell me what happens if a supermajority of miners and nodes decide to run software with different consensus rule from Core? Sounds like a CPU vote too me.

It is my reading of the code and understanding of the emergent crypto-economy that leads me to these self-evident conclusions.

Are you refuting my points or agreeing with them? If you have an actual rebuttal to any of them, I'm interested in hearing it.

"If"

And if they are not?