HN user
I'm curious about their statement that they automatically append a slash as soon as you type the month.
The instructions say "MM/YY", but do not indicate whether the month is required to have two digits, or just permitted to have two digits. My card says it expires 1/16 So when I key in 1, does a slash get appended? Probably not. Instead, it gets appended after 11. 11/6. now what?
(IIRC you have to be convicted to be pardoned, anyway)
Nixon was pardoned without conviction.
So, Agent-1, based on your training and experience, can you conclude, Agent-1, that simply because someone uses a pseudonymous username to conceal their identity, Agent-1, that they are a criminal?
bitmessage may be our only hope.
There should be a bitcoin address for donations.
There's no reason to trust me, but if you send me bitcoins, I'll convert to dollars and send to the fund. You preserve your anonymity. I'll convert all donations at the end of each month.
173WSQxBiwswTtMBxnnhGTZJtTy2RrdLgn
with coinbase, I transferred maybe $600 to Bitcoin. With Dwolla, I transferred maybe $60,000. That should be an indication of the potential.
The reason is that with Dwolla / Mt Gox, I could control my purchase much better. I love ooinbase: they are a GREAT consumer service. But for large sums, I think Dwolla could have a huge win.
Where did you get that, out of that PDF? The number 25% sounds extremely high.
I have read this PDF before, a while ago, and I don't remember that stat. A quick glance tells me that they say that 2 addresses have over 500,000 Bitcoins, but that's just 4.6% (or more, obviously) of the total 10.7M issued so far. And there's no proof that this is the creator of Bitcoin. In fact, it's more likely one of the large exchanges!
So, please help me understand your statement. If it's buried in the text of that PDF, my apologies.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the prevailing thought when that article was written (1992) was that digital currency would resemble more of a transferred digital coin, with signatures representing each transaction. So if I had coin #12345, and I transferred it to you, I would digitally sign it to you giving your private key the spend capability.
With those architectures, a central authority would be required to prevent the double-spend. And with those architectures, the coins grow with each spend.
The difference with Bitcoin (which I think is totally misnamed) is that it's not a coin architecture, it's a ledger architecture. So no matter how many times the amount 1BTC is transferred, each transfer could be just the same length - the sender's address, the recipient's address, and an appropriate signature. Even 50 years from now and ten thousand transfers of that "coin" later, the "coin" doesn't get larger.
The ledger gets larger, but the coin does not (since really there's no such thing as a "bit COIN" - really what you have is a series of account numbers in the giant shared ledger.)
Right now they subdivide to 8 decimal places. .00000001
With minimal change to the protocol they could subdivide to much smaller units.
I think "bitcoin" is a confusing name, because it's really more like a group of account numbers, which can have money with 8 digits of precision to the right of the decimal point.
Think of a Bitcoin Address(es) as your account number(s), and your Private Key as your ATM card, PIN, and signature all wrapped in one.
If someone sends me 50 bitcoins, I have it in my "account" in the giant ledger in the sky. If I want to send 3.5 of them to someone, what might happen is that I create a transaction that sends 50 bitcoins to two different places... 3.5 to someone, and 46.5 to another account (of mine, my change!) in the giant ledger in the sky.
Or for simplicity, think of them like rewards points, and don't try to make it too complicated.
Just thought it was interesting to see the term Django take off (with the new movie out).
So much for using Google Trends to see what's more popular.
Good catch! You diagnosed my eroblem eerfectly.
Looks cool, but I couldn't make it work.
I went to http://patriciopalladino.com/files/hieroglyphy/ and put in a script "alert(1);". This provided me with a script of about 8300 characters.
I created a web page to execute the script:
<body onload="
[][(![]+[])[!+[] ...
</body>
ReferenceError: Unescaee is not defined.
I use the Roomba technique to eat my corn. Random walks.
Oh, and on your point #3... Right now, I intentionally do not allow you to initiate a text conversation to a phone number. There are a few issues and challenges with that (particularly in spam prevention, and in having to know the user's carrier).
So in other words, you wouldn't be able to use your second phone and decide on an impulse to send a message to 867-5309.
On the other hand, you could tell the other person to initiate the conversation to you. "Hey, TEXT me at philiph@txt.gs. Yeah, I know it's confusing. Just put the email address in, where you usually put phone numbers."
Then once they texted you, you could text them back numerous times, over weeks or months, until they "/stop" the service.
Thanks. I wrote the Terms and Conditions at 4AM when wired on coffee. It's hard to keep them brief and yet explain a little bit of the "why".
Yeah, I'm not sure about http://txt.gs. Google/blogger wouldn't let me point that to their server. And I really don't want to set up a web server just to redirect. Maybe someone here has some ideas.
Thanks for checking it out!
This was one of those "it's a 3-day weekend... I wonder if I can build something and learn something."
I decided to cobble something together that permits anonymous texting. It's certainly not perfect, but I thought it was worth showing off to the HN crowd.
$35 for a domain name (sigh, I used godaddy for a Southern Georgia .gs domain; namecheap couldn't help me. Sorry guys). An old server, ubuntu Server edition, Python, Postfix, Sqlite, and little bit of code, a free blogger "website", and it all pretty much works.
What do you think?
PS I'm happy to post a follow-up with all the gory details.
You may want to see a doctor. It's quite possible you have STCTD Disorder. (Sensitivity to calling things disorders)
A common strategy is to pre-announce when you know a competitor is ready to release a product but yours is in the pipeline.
I'm not claiming that this is the case, but if some other comedian is ready to release on Friday (and therefore become the second significant person to do it), Gaffigan's pre-announcement may actually be part of a well planned strategy.
Funny that Bagcheck is listed as a "good" example.
I was just commenting to someone as to how confusing that site is. There's a box next to the "JOIN" / "SIGN IN" words in the upper right, that is positioned next to those words (as if those words are the label for the text box).
So you start to key in your name, to join, and a bunch of choices are displayed. If you select one (even your own), you are whisked away to another page that isn't even the join / sign in part of the site. You are no closer to being signed in than you were before. And actually further than if you had clicked on the label for the text box that says "sign in" (which is actually a button or a link, although not identified as such, unless you happen to mouse over it).
Ends up the "join / sign in" text box is actually a SEARCH text box.
yeah, real simplified. Put the word "search" in there. geesh.
With all this power and smarts built into this alarm clock, couldn't they just put in an automatic adjustment for Daylight Savings Time?
I would love to have one less clock that I need to adjust two times a year.
Edit: It knows the day of week. All it would need is to know what political zone you are in, and be able to predict the whims of the politicians. How hard can that be? :-)
I'm glad that the webkit-specific features were prefixed. I just wish they would have chosen a prefix that was a wake-up call to anyone relying on them.
Perhaps a prefix like "this-feature-will-be-deprecated-in-2013-".
Slightly off-topic, but in a similar manner, when we struggled with users permanently deleting records, ignoring the warning that they were permanently deleting records, and calling us to retrieve the irretrievable, we changed the confirmation box from "click OK" to "type the word 'irreversible". This cut the calls to near zero.
Here's a frequency chart of the first 3 images:
(23, 'comma') (10, 'capital-i') (8, 'slash-slash') (7, 'divided-by') (7, 'capital-l') (6, 'ex') (5, 'slash-slash-backslash-backslash') (5, 'slash-slash-backslash') (5, 'equals') (3, 'plus') (3, 'minus-dot') (3, 'equivalent') (3, '11-over-1') (2, 'zee') (2, 'vertical-line') (2, 'three-peaks') (2, 'slash-backslash-backslash') (2, 'slash') (2, 's-tac-toe') (2, 'minus') (2, 'lower-j') (2, 'leaning-heart') (2, 'c-slash-slash') (1, 'y-slash-slash') (1, 'upsidedown-t') (1, 'u-bar') (1, 'three-horizontal-two-vertical') (1, 'squared-capital-n') (1, 'square-c') (1, 'slash-i') (1, 'seven') (1, 'script-s') (1, 'script-j') (1, 'plus-dot') (1, 'parallel-lines') (1, 'minus-lower-dot') (1, 'lower-d') (1, 'l-on-l') (1, 'l-in-l') (1, 'j') (1, 'gamma') (1, 'four') (1, 'equals-slash') (1, 'crap') (1, 'close-bracket') (1, 'capital-z') (1, 'capital-t') (1, 'capital-m') (1, 'capital-f') (1, 'capital-b') (1, 'capital-a') (1, 'c-omega') (1, 'backslash') (1, '1-slash-1')
Here's the first four images... ready for parsing by your program:
:::: image 1, left:
s-tac-toe equals minus-dot seven ex comma slash-slash-backslash gamma capital-l lower-j ex slash
:::: image 1, right, downward
capital-t capital-i equals four parallel-lines slash-slash-backslash equals-slash comma s-tac-toe slash-slash-backslash slash-slash-backslash-backslash comma
:::: image 1, left, upper
capital-l divided-by capital-i comma equivalent comma lower-j comma capital-f slash-slash-backslash capital-i squared-capital-n zee slash-slash-backslash-backslash comma divided-by slash-slash comma slash-backslash-backslash slash-slash minus-dot slash-slash-backslash
:::: image 2
plus-dot plus leaning-heart upsidedown-t minus vertical-line ex comma
leaning-heart capital-m capital-i capital-a minus three-peaks comma vertical-line crap capital-b close-bracket plus script-j script-s lower-d comma
u-bar three-peaks capital-i
:::: image 3
capital-l backslash divided-by c-slash-slash capital-i comma capital-i equivalent divided-by slash-slash-backslash-backslash comma capital-i minus-dot three-horizontal-two-vertical ex comma equals zee capital-l
l-in-l 11-over-1 comma y-slash-slash slash-slash-backslash-backslash comma capital-i divided-by comma minus-lower-dot c-omega slash-slash slash-i 11-over-1 slash-slash square-c equals capital-l equivalent slash-slash comma
capital-l slash-slash slash comma l-on-l plus slash-backslash-backslash slash-slash-backslash-backslash comma 1-slash-1 11-over-1 capital-z comma capital-i equals ex comma j divided-by c-slash-slash slash-slash capital-l divided-by slash-slash ex comma
:::: image 4 (repeats image 2)
plus-dot plus leaning-heart upsidedown-t minus vertical-line ex comma
leaning-heart capital-m capital-i capital-a minus three-peaks comma vertical-line crap capital-b close-bracket plus script-j script-s lower-d comma
u-bar three-peaks capital-i
The best example of voluntary contribution to a government is the founding of the US government itself. It was entirely voluntary, while taxes were being collected by the enemy. And yet somehow this was successful enough to overthrow the largest world power.
But the obvious objection to that is "times have changed". Religious institutions and other charities are simply modern examples.
Personally, I believe that the entire US government (in its present state and power structure) could be funded voluntarily. Not by promising salvation in the afterlife, but by marketing to the citizens that if you want to remain free, it's your civic duty to contribute (at some prescribed rate).
Since arriving at this new way of looking at taxes, my attitude at the ballot box will be something like this: When asked "Do you approve an 'x-mil' tax levy for the Department of Disability?", the question is NOT asking me "Are you personally willing to support the Department of Disability for Y-dollars?" (which I wholeheartedly support), but rather "Are you willing to hire enforcers to enforce the extraction of payment from someone who may not agree or may not be able to support the Department of Disability? The enforcers may harass, bind, and imprison those that do not support it. And you are hiring these enforcers." Because that is REALLY the question being asked.
At that point, I need to make a moral decision. Is the tax so important that I am willing to vote to imprison someone who doesn't support it?
On the other hand, I am perfectly willing to "sign up" on the spot, for automatic deductions for myself to support the Department of Disability. But that isn't an option. And it should be.
In order to "phase in" widespread voluntary "tax", each organization would need to facilitate easy acceptance of direct payments (just like charities do), and our leadership would need to "market" to the people that contribution is the right thing to do (just as Obama, Bush, and Clinton did in soliciting donations for Haiti).
Pretty simple, really. You'd know pretty quickly whether it was viable.
Honestly, tax is the "lazy man's" way to raise revenue. "Let's just vote it in... then we don't have to justify it further."
I would cringe if my contributions to Wikipedia were mandatory. Yet Wikipedia is always able to raise the funds necessary to continue on their mission. But if they started preaching eternal damnation if you didn't contribute, I bet the contribution spigot would run dry.
Agreed, but it's the same organization that is performing both "services" - providing stability and guiding it "stably" to zero.
First, I am not saying that I don't value government services. I am saying that as someone who believes that people should be free, it's disingenuous of me to force someone else to pay for freedom, through the threat of guns. (I am completely willing to pay my "fair share" and more.)
Second, if the government provides a valuable service, people should and would WANT to pay for it. So there's no need for me to FORCE someone to pay for it.
Third, you named a great DISservice. Currency "stably" heading to zero [1] is really not a valuable service.
[1] http://www.profitscore.com/articles/prof_ValueofaBuck_Aug-09...
Not paying taxes harms people??? That's pretty funny. Yeah, it harms the person not paying taxes.
Your false assumption is that people (as a whole) wouldn't pay an equivalent amount, or more, to charitable organizations or government, if they were not compelled to pay taxes. It's very closed-minded. I'm actually somewhat shocked at the responses on HN, because this crowd usually doesn't jump to unproven conclusions.
> Not paying taxes means that people take from society without giving back their fair share. [citation needed]
> Not paying taxes means million of kids sleeping hungry for no fault of their own but being born in to wrong parent. [citation needed]
> It means crime running rampant, as there is no police to stop criminals. [citation needed]
You, too, are making the leap that compulsory taxes are the only way to raise money for services. It's already been demonstrated numerous times, every day, that voluntary contributions can fund every one of these services. Not only that, but it can be done more efficiently than through a tax system.
Point by point: first addressing People who don't pay taxes don't pay their fair share. It seems to me that someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett (who happen to be the EXTREME, so should be great examples to PROVE your case), actually pay FAR MORE than their "fair share" (whatever that is - apparently you have some sort of formula), by donating vast amounts of wealth to charity (to keep kids from sleeping hungry).
People cite Romney as an example of someone "not paying his fair share", yet he gave far more to charity than most people.
Great use of the "Think of the Children" argument, by the way. Suckers everywhere would fall for it. But the fact remains that charitable organizations, through VOLUNTARY contributions do tremendous work in the US and around the world. Filtering charity through government bureaucracy and waste, in an effort to "help the children" is nonsense. People WANT to live in a society free from starving children, which is why charity does as well as it does. Imagine how much MORE it could do, if we weren't FORCED to pay the government.
People also want to live in crime-free environments, and people with the most to lose may have extra incentive to do so. So much so that private security forces are funded all the time voluntarily.
I haven't read an argument yet that has convinced me that I can decide what someone's "fair share" is, and force them to pay it based on MY arbitrary decision. I DO have a sense of what is reasonable for me to pay, and I do believe in generosity. But I'd rather give because it's the right thing to do, not give because someone made me. But I still willingly pay my taxes "honestly". I just don't think it's right that I dictate how much someone else pays.
As I have shown, the argument really can't be extended to theft. Freedom does not extend to harming others. "My freedom to swing my fist stops at your nose", or whatever that saying is.
Not paying taxes does not inherently harm anyone except the non-taxpayer, who goes to jail. There are plenty of other ways to "pay your fair share" as you say, without being forcibly compelled to do so.
You said two different things: that tithing is payment for facilities, and then that tithing is a tax.
Mormons - all people - have the free choice to pay or not pay the Mormon church. And they do quite well.
I would have no issue with a government that said "If you want to use our services, you need to pay. If you want to use roads that we build, you need to pay." And then people could freely choose.
I have an issue with demanding that someone else pay for their so-called "freedom".
People thought something as complicated as an Operating System couldn't be written by volunteers also, because volunteerism doesn't scale.
> Where exactly is the unfairness in taxing wealthier people at the same percentage as middle class and others?
I have no issue with cutting the middle class tax. The false premise in the article leads people to the false conclusion that the only solution is to raise the tax on the wealthy.