Oh god I love Halting State. It felt like a tale that could be next year, at the time (he even has an independent Scotland, which almost happened). And the ending is mindblowing.
Now, on a reread, it feels like right now. And it was written in 2008…
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I suspect that’s way too subtle.
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Nah, it predates the US intervention in 'Nam.
…ummm… given our venue, aren’t we forgetting a relevant third novel?
OK, it’s probably not technically SF by the strictest definition. But if we stick to that definition, Halting State is marginal and Gibson hasn’t been writing SF for a long time. It still feels like the right time to mention it.
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anything including other peoples opinions.
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You’re right. Please take the money I invested in that post.
People here usually demand double their money back!
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Which is, let’s face it, the majority of the activity. Most speculation is being done by those with no connection to the underlying businesses, which is why speculation leads directly to people starving and economies collapsing.
Except that with Bitcoin, in order for it to actually be useful (for anything other than buying drugs/hitmen), you have to convert it into “real” currency, and currency conversion fees end up taking a bigger cut than Paypal does, assuming you get anything out of the deal (e.g. Mt Gox).
How do you figure? I have never encountered anybody offering drugs nor hitmen for bitcoin - but I do encounter other businesses which accept it. So hearing this claim over and over seems a bit sensationalistic. Has anyone ever offered black market services to you personally for bitcoin, or is this something being regurgitated from broadcast media?
Broadcast Media?
You don’t mean…
gasp
NCIS?
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Deserve? That implies that there is some sort of morality at work here. Speculation is gambling and people don’t “deserve” to lose any more than they “deserve” to win. If one player bets it all on black and one all on red, neither one “deserves” to win or lose. But they should anticipate and prepare for either eventuality. But of course gambling draws people who expect and think that they “deserve” to win. Any success reinforces their own estimate of their superior intelligence. Any failure is obviously due to unforeseeable (not merely unforseen) external “black swan” events. And it is that self-congratulatory smugness that drives the disdain that we tend to feel for the “investors” in schemes like this.
insofar as the house always wins, and only the innumerate think otherwise, sure. What you said.
Well assuming a typical American North East accent gook the slur and spook (also a slur!) would be pronounced the same. But book and gobbledygook would also be pronounced the same with that sort of short ‘u’ sound rather than the long double o “ooooooooo” sound. In fact various British/Irish accents are the only place (off the top of my head) where that “oooo” double o thing show up in book.
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VCs aren’t excited about Bitcoin, they’re excited about the tech behind it: that we can create a public unchangeable ledger, using peers. In Bitcoin this is known as the block chain, where it is used to establish trust behind a currency without a single central authority. What other applications could we build off of it?
https://medium.com/bitcoin-btc/blockchain-applications-b093f1cfda24
Edit: Also see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-bitcoin-isnt-like-internet-joichi-ito
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Perhaps more than a coincidence? Maybe all those Russian spammers are having to draw down on their Bitcoin stashes. Be interesting to see who holds Bitcoin and who started the selling.
You can pay taxes in US dollars
Bitcoin is a selfpionzi scheme.
Taxes aren’t real, man.
