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fthssht

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The correct comparison is with the transaction and storage costs, in electricity, of storing gold in fort knox and moving it once a century in a boat across the ocean. Tesla's 1.5 billion USD in bitcoin probably won't move in your lifetime.

Its really amazing that you would try to defend free press in a discussion about Assange. Locking up Assange is an attack on free press. Trump calling CNN liars actually isn't. Obama calling Fox liars wouldn't be either.

This study says the effect was small. http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf Even Nate Silver acknowledges the effect of Russia was modest. Maybe he's changed his tune now? This was written before the fervor around this nonsense really got cooking. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-did-russian-in...

An indictment isn't proof. You aren't 100% certain of anything. Assange has never lied to us. The intelligence agencies have. Assange says it wasn't Russia. Its amazing how the left has turned on him.

Yes, Russia wanted Trump that was why the Buff Bernie meme was out there. My point is its probably a trivial impact. People who have the slightest ability to be open-minded about this issue generally can see that. $100,000 for facebook memes compared to Hillary getting questions in advance from U.S. media? https://www.cnet.com/news/russian-trolls-targeted-teens-on-f...

None of this stuff is certain and it really is amazing how blown out of proportion it is in people's minds.

What is the extent of the Russian interference really though? Studies show it didn't change the outcome. We still don't really know who hacked the DNC, whether it was Russia as a hand selected group of people from intelligence agencies included was likely, or whether it was an insider as implied by Assange and security experts who looked at how fast the information was downloaded. We know Russia did take both sides on issues like black lives matter to "cause division" We know they created a "Buff Bernie" meme, but it really feels like a massive excuse by the Democrats for an embarrassing failure. The whole thing at this point has come to feel comical. Am I missing something or is this still all a bunch of nonsense strewn around for clicks and ratings?

My point only is that the total value is relatively very high and its price would be as difficult for one individual to move around as a large cap stock.

Your hypothetical 1 trade a day isn't reality. Click this link and look at the depth chart. You would need millions of dollars to move the price from 6925 to 6950. https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD

I don't think its used a lot as a currency now. I think there is a lot of investment in it based on the belief that it will be used as a currency in the future or that it can act as a store of wealth.

Are you referring specifically to certain Chinese exchanges where this could be done without a commission? Have there ever been any accusations that U.S. exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini engaged in wash trading?

I think "not entirely true" is an understatement. Bitcoin has a 115 Billion dollar market cap and is traded all around the world in arms length transactions for local currencies and is treated as fungible. Like to gold market people loudly insist that its manipulated but I don't understand how it could be to any large degree when I can go to a pawn shop and buy or sell it anywhere in the world. I'm not sure what central regulatory body would give any greater confidence than that fact.

I think what you're describing is a subset of the character of your neighborhood changing in a way you don't like. For example, your neighborhood becomes expensive, or gentrified, or crime filled or you don't like the noisy guy who moves in upstairs from the apartment you're living in. Or the deli you like downstairs closes and is replaced by a hair salon and you didn't sign up for that. These are problems that are part of life, you can't control everything outside of what you own. I wouldn't personally expect to legislate it any more than if my gf broke up with me because of Tinder or FB or something its just life.

You make a good point that the value of regulations for Uber is negligible. Regulatory capture is an understandable motivation by industry but its weird to see the public embrace it. I see a lot of people in this thread complaining about how Uber, AirBNB, and Turo aren't fair to industry. The point of regulation is to protect the public. If they aren't needed for that purpose they should be repealed for existing players. Taxi Medallions artificially constraining the supply of taxis were always a stupid idea regardless of whether Uber and Lyft were created.

Give someone a ride, let them borrow your car, let them stay over at your house while they're on vacatin, have a one night stand with them. Nobody thinks we need government regulations for this stuff. What is it about commerce that scares us so much?

I find it hard to imagine any sane person intentionally writing ambiguous contracts with the plan to hash out the details in court in the future. The last place you want to end up is in court because of the time cost and uncertainty.

It seems to me that Amazon gets a tremendous amount of bad press singing the exact song you just sung. However, I think the analogy is more like Uber drivers for package delivery. A union won't stop a job from becoming obsolete due to technology and society isn't willing to stop the advance of technology. Its probably more advisable to develop a plan to retrain then try to get in a union as a taxi driver or package deliverer.

Agree no paradigms shattered with a driver in the seat from an economic POV. Im not sure safety gains have to be marginal. This thing, scaled over millions of miles, paid uber driver in the seat with a system that chimes to make driver take control could be far safer than distracted uber driver alone dealing with everything driving a taxi and communicating with customers entails.

The problem lies that nobody thought the lawsuit against Gawker was a miscarrage of justice until they learned a billionaire was involved. Its become more about fear of rich people than the facts of this specific case and this specific company.

Your problem with ideology is that its not as comforting as religion? I think ideology can help take a 10,000 foot view of highly complex situations. There are many factors in a political or economic decision but we can easily say that free markets have worked better through global history than communism.

There ought to be a check against a DA pursuing a vastly unpopular prosecution or pursuing a case with highly disproportionate threats. The incentives are messed up. A DA spends public money going after a case that might be good for their career but is totally out of line with what the public wants. I'm sure many people would be happy to see him face some consequences for what he did to JSTOR but I bet they would be overwhelmingly opposed to threats of the magnitude he faced. The problems aren't limited to the CFAA many federal laws are very broad and anyone can become a target. The situation is almost as if we have bills of attainder. If your name appears in the newspaper a prosecutor can find something to pin on you and make threats that force a settlement and or cost you a fortune in legal fees.

That's sort of like saying doctors are so focused on cancer patients they should focus on people who are perfectly healthy. This story is tragic. That is why people write about it. It also illuminates a lot of problems with our society such as mental health, over zealous prosecution, social isolation.

What baffles me is that people are so reactionary and outraged about anyone mentioning it. Like they hate him for trying to be a martyr and nobody should criticize the sacred infallible system. It seems likely he killed himself because of depression not to make the prosecutor look bad or make a statement so lets not resent him.

Looks like you've been reading Bostrom. I was actually annoyed about the amount of time he spent on the whole notion of genetically engineering smarter humans. I think his intent was to rigorously prove that even if technology for some reason halted and all progress in machine learning ended along with moore's law we'd still reach super intelligence. From that standpoint I get it as a philosopher to create a bulletproof argument. But I think it's very unlikely that it will happen that way. It's already far more practical to teach Watson to read better than genetically engineer a new Einstein. Also I don't think there's an iq 200 set of genes, there's probably trade offs that would prevent this a brain has a given number of neurons and they operate at a slow speed so this is like trying to breed a better horse when cars are obviously on the horizon and will be followed by jets.

Comcast has a monopoly because regulations and high costs of infrastructure make it difficult for competitors to emerge. Somehow you think they deregulation of the taxi industry will recreate this situation. Cost of a car and the regulations gone? You've already called a uber monopoly?

People have to work because they have no capital. They are drowning. A job is a life preserver. The solution is to demand a bigger life preserver from he business man (minimum wage) the solution is to remove the pool (citizens divided guaranteed income negative income tax. One helps the poor the other fucks them.

I think it's a tad misleading to suggest user or silicon valley are setting policy. When the government "sets policy" that's really just making things illegal. Silicon valley can offer a service and the government can decide it's so bad that it's worth spending tax dollars to prevent it as a crime or they can not. People are so quick to defend the status quo. Right now consensual sex is unregulated if no money changes hands. We could require std inspection and maternity insurance for accidental pregnancy. Sounds ridiculous but if it existed already people would defend it just because it sounds like a reasonable reason. If people saw policy as what it is in criminalization they might trad more lightly but uber isn't setting policy because they can't.