base698

Yep James Madison

I had surgery this morning. When I get off Vicodin I'll have stories for days.

Getting half a billion dollars in Elon Musks hands is worth what ever crony capitalism took place. I personally would rather live in a country with rockets and affordable space travel where these loans are a multiplier effect for people like Elon Musk.

I mounted mine on a wedge.

They're being detained and question because they were unknowingly friends with radicals.

Or to paraphrase: the problem with skydiving is all the damn skydivers :) When I was a young pup all the free fliers would jump with the noobs one on one and then we'd run out and do zoo dives. There are ways to include newer jumpers, but the serious people do 10s of hours in the tunnel and don't want to feel like they are wasting their jump. It took me 400 jumps over 2 seasons to dock head down before the tunnel existed. It kept the experience differential small enough for longer that it was easier to include people. I think the tunnel has been worse for the sport in that regard.

It's also much easier to build a UI that only requires a payment button--no need for people to enter billing address or phone number to prove who they are. All you need is the wallet address, sending the bitcoins to that completes the order. Bitpay already works this way.

The PR department for the show must be getting the biggest fucking Christmas bonus of the decade. Two predictions: A&E planned on selling the show anyway and will get a boat load of money or Phil will apologize and return to higher ratings and greater ad revenue. GG marketing at A&E.

The 500 in a year guy probably doesn't know a dead skydiver but I'd bet the other guy does. Seen a lot of people in the first group quit when faced with that.

About five years ago I was jumping one regularly. I got 1.6 as my best glide but was normally in the 1.3 to 1.4 range. IIRC was not much better than PF track suit. How'd you fair? PS been jumping in your area with Adam quite a bit. Need to make jump together :)

I'm talking once you spend them. The same risks of carrying cash apply and more risk if you use a third party service to store bitcoin. In the current model a third party like Target is a big score. A hacker can compromise everyone's cards if they access Target. The risk is more spread with bitcoin and there are different things to worry about. Delegating the responsibility to an unproven banking system is silly with both bitcoin and other currency. A consumer system like target could store the wallets offline and monitor the payments externally to verify if someone paid. No risk to the consumer and nothing to hack.

I don't agree with the tinfoil hat crowd but do think bitcoin solves some pretty serious problems. The first being data leaks, like the recent Target leak, isn't an issue with bitcoin payments. Once you pay with bitcoin no one can recharge you. As a merchant you don't have to worry about the merchant freezing your account or the buyer issuing a chargeback. Micropayments are the last issue. You could charge .001 to read an article online. It's silly to think of it as a replacement for the USD, but it is a great compliment.

I didn't say it was, that's why I made a distinction between the consumer and the merchant. I would much rather use bitcoin to buy something instead of having my credit card information stored by a third party indefinitely.

I think at current difficulty it would take hundreds of years to mine a block. You'd be better off buying lottery tickets :)

One thing that's gotten lost in the speculative talk is its utility. Buying online is much less of a risk with bitcoin. As a merchant you don't have to worry about charge backs. As a consumer you don't have to enter a long form proving you are the card owner, since it operates more like cash. Consumers also don't have to worry about the merchants leaking their card information. There is also multiparty payment useful for contracts. You can make it so two of three parties have to agree for the transaction to go through. Useful for arbitration in absence of a notary.

I reduced my holdings to 10% of what they were before this run up. I've done this 3 times now, seems like a good strategy.

But they aren't anymore, which is kind of why it isn't as big of a stretch as it would of been if people still used shiny rocks for money. Given shiny rocks are limited it's harder to start trillion dollar wars or use them to finance billion dollar business deals and real estate deals. I know, it's like a libertarian wet dream. Completely unregulated free market. You can easily see the importance of some of the controls we have in the current monetary system as well as supply and demand in real time. Quite fascinating to me, and that's not even going into the technical side which is even more fascinating.

I don't know what this has to do with the discussion. It's a currency, so it has no underpinning of value like the US dollar. The volume I've messed with it over the past 4 years has never resulted in a problem of transferring it into another currency.

I'm fine with today's monetary system too. I see bitcoin as a compliment not a replacement to our monetary system. I look at it as a growing opportunity for the third world who don't have enough capital for the 1st world to care to solve their problems.

I don't understand this line of thought. Why is it all or nothing? Can't you just invest 1% in it and hold? If you'd of bought at previous highs and held for a few years your return would be astronomical. Three years ago some friends from work and I bought $300 worth when it was at $12. Over time it sunk down to $3 and I bought a few more. He sold when it went down and lost then his shit when it skyrocketed. I had kept it and offloaded it at $200. If you think through the issues of today's money and understand the problems bitcoin solves, then it isn't that sketchy. One of the problems is how to loan $100 to a goat herder without the bank taking 50%, or how to keep bankers from over leveraging your money. It has insane practical value, but it is speculative and risky, but risk is something that can be managed. Mining requires a huge investment now, and you'd never mine a block of bitcoins without being part of a mining pool.

It hit $900 a piece today briefly. Settling around $750. http://bitcoincharts.com/ The senate had a hearing about bitcoin today that was very positive. Likely part of the increase.

It wasn't gross receipts for the business, but it was the take home gross. I'm sure they took home $1.2 after taxes. Why don't you explain since you're close to the trade :) I just remembered some story about Goldman. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/07/24/how-goldman-sachs-and-wall-street-manipulate-alumnimum-and-other-commodities

Horse cocky. Farmers are the farthest from free market you can get. The government pays subsidies for all kind a of things they shouldn't and even have protections and price controls. Not to mention the market manipulation by commodity traders... My wife used to specialize in auditing medical practices. It's anecdotal, but they were all making $2 mil a year. I'd always here stories of them bitching about $200 fee making her job harder.

I have used these two: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-trail/wrist-worn/foretrex-301/prod30025.html http://www.suunto.com/Products/sports-watches/Suunto-Ambit2/Suunto-Ambit2-Black/ The Foretrex you can just turn on in the plane and forget about. It's also useful to know how far past the spot you are before you exit or get to the door. I just got the Ambit2, so I can't speak as much about it. I made a display that has ground speed, glide ratio and altitude which seemed to work well on the 2 jumps I used it.

I've used a garmin wrist mount for most of this data and never had issues with it acquiring a signal. I've had tracks where my forward was more like 80mph and when maxing out a vampire3 forward speed is as high as 110 mph. When I'm relaxed it's about 80mph.