Tehhund

This isn't Reddit, you don't have to turn every discussion into a fight. I'm genuinely interested in cryptocurrency for reasons such as the article you linked: there are areas where traditional finance genuinely has failed to meet people's needs. Providing a medium of exchange for the unbanked is a great example of something it could possibly help with, and I think that's a good thing if it happens. But we should also be able to talk about the problems with cryptocurrencies and the cases where it doesn't work as well as traditional finance. And if this prediction doesn't pan out and cryptocurrency doesn't become a major way of banking the unbanked, we should be able to consider what could accomplish that goal. It might be a different cryptocurrency, or a new thing inspired by cryptocurrency, or something that has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. After all, cryptocurrency is not a goal in itself.

Ah yes Bitcoin, famously free of fraud and abuse.

More seriously, every system can be used for fraud. The question is whether the solution is actually better overall. We could prevent all wire fraud by returning to a cash-only economy. But that would be hugely inconvenient and therefore create a huge drag on the economy compared to a world where we can do electronic transfers even though electronic transfers open us up to wire fraud. Returning to cash-only is not worth the increase in security, and it opens us up to other issues (e.g., bank runs and someone stealing all the money under my mattress).

And while power use is a problem with Proof of Work coins, it's not my biggest concern about cryptocurrency because Proof of Stake can fix that issue. It's a shame that the biggest coin now is PoW but hopefully that will change. The bigger issue is "is cryptocurrency better than traditional currency?" So far it hasn't proven to be better except in extremely limited circumstances. And a lot of the ways cryptocurrency is better will go away if governments start regulating it like other forms of finance. Having your money in cryptocurrency won't protect you from the police and courts.

We trusted bankers to invest our money, and some short sold the housing market with that money

Okay? You could do that with cryptocurrency if traders started accepting cryptocurrency for shorts. The only reason you can't do that today is traders won't accept cryptocurrency for shorts, and that's basically security through obscurity.

See I think more nuanced takes like this are good. I'm not familiar with the Chinese banking issue that you are describing, but it sounds like deposit insurance (like the FDIC) might be a better solution than cryptocurrency, and it's definitely better understood. Since the real world value of cryptocurrencies are so volatile they are a questionable store of value, and taking a risk on a poorly regulated bank might be better than taking a risk on storing your money in a volatile and unregulated security like cryptocurrency. Honestly it's hard to know which is the better risk. So it could be better or it could be worse.

I agree with your point about transferring money internationally, and even within the US transferring money used to be a real pain. So I'm still interested to see if cryptocurrency can be a better medium of exchange or medium of transfer than traditional ways, or at least give traditional systems incentive to improve. But again the volatility is a concern so for most people the best move is probably to get in and out of the crypto market as quickly as possible or else risk getting a vastly different amount of money out of it than you put in. Admittedly it could appreciate, but when I'm transferring money to someone I don't want that to simultaneously be an investment. The few times I have used Bitcoin to purchase something the whole process has taken hours, and there's no guarantee there won't be price swings — a lot could happen in those hours.

I appreciate the brutal honesty about cryptocurrency not being for the average Joe. It's not that long since many cryptocurrency boosters were hoping it would replace fiat currency, but now that I think about it I haven't heard as much about that recently. In its current state it is really not for the average Joe.

Sure, but what real-world problem does a trustless solve? I thought this was all very interesting years ago but now that we've had blockchain for years it seems it's only good for illegal or morally questionable transactions.

We call this a "load-bearing could." Or, "could is doing a lot of work in that sentence." I mean, sure, it could, in the same sense that angry ticks could fire out of my nipples.

When AI starts telling us how to efficiently manufacture these new materials, now that would be revolutionary.

https://miniflux.app/ - web based so you can read it locally or remotely.

https://youtu.be/9Gc4QTqslN4 the relevant lyrics start around 1:06.

Yeah, it will help and it won't. If you're uploading through a typical cable internet connection, WiFi will almost never be the bottleneck. But if you're streaming 4k in a part of your house that doesn't have good coverage while other people use the same connection, it could make a difference.

I do a lot of streaming from my desktop to my TVs and I occasionally have bandwidth problems, so this could help that. And I have 300 up / 300 down fiber Internet, and in parts of my house I have problems getting anywhere close to that on WiFi. So WiFi 7 might help with those cases even if in the end your ISP is usually the bottleneck.

Something that helped me is setting smaller goals, like studying just a little before taking a break. If I ordinarily study for 0 minutes and screw around for an hour, I'd try to study for 5 minutes and screw around for 55 minutes. Smaller goals are more achievable and take the pressure off. Then you can build on that small success instead of feeling like it has to be all or nothing.

The approved mRNA vaccines went through the same approval process as any vaccine. And once approved, they are monitored for safety like any other vaccine. Between pre-approval testing and post-approval monitoring, we would have detected any issues. So the proof is in the pudding — lots of countries have approved them and none have found risks that are worse than the disease they protect against (currently only COVID but there are more mRNA vaccines in the works).

There's also no reason to fear the way they work. Other vaccines introduce antigens (molecules that your body doesn't like and produces antibodies to attack) in various ways — sometimes with a weakend virus, sometimes with a dead virus, sometimes just the antigens themselves. mRNA is just another way to introduce antigens so your body learns to fight them. For a little while your body follows the instructions in the mRNA to produce the antigens, and then your body learns to attack those antigens. It's not all that different from the way other vaccines work. mRNA breaks down pretty quickly in your body so it's not even in your system for very long, and there's no mechanism in the body for mRNA to produce lasting changes. So it's a lot like you got a cold: for a little while the cold makes your body produce molecules, then your body fights it all off, and then in the end there's no permanent change except your body learned to fight off that particular antigen.

We just got 2 new Carrier Infinity 24 heat pumps and I don't think I've ever heard them running (except for the fan pushing air through the ducts, but that's part of a traditional furnace too). It's an expensive system that is advertised as being particularly quiet, and I think they deliver - I haven't noticed any change in noise levels. One of them had an issue for a while so we ran the backup gas furnace instead, and I couldn't tell the difference between the one that was using the heat pump and the one that was using gas.

So it's possible to get a quiet heat pump, depending on the model.

If I'm thinking about the future and it'll take just a minute or two, I'll do it right then. If it'll take lots of time I'll put a task on my calendar for another day and deal with it then, then get back to living my life (well, posting memes, but I didn't come here to be judged). Now planning has a time but I don't have to think about it until then.