Of course, that was my point a couple posts up. :-) One needs to know the basis and the value at the time of trade. I was only objecting to the notion that the customer is selling the coins and using fiat currency. It seems more of a barter and of course one needs to know the value of the object being bartered for tax purposes.

I wanted to point out that the sale takes place at the exchange to emphasize the conveniences and lack of risk in such systems. The merchant prices and does all their accounting in fiat, just as they always have. They merely transmit a fiat amount to the exchange. The exchange does the conversion and transmits back to the merchant an equivalent bitcoin amount and a bitcoin payment address. This address is the merchants. The exchange receives the coins and credits the merchant's account with the exact fiat amount originally specified. There is no risk to the merchant of price fluctuations.

Its the simplicity and lack of risk in such systems that makes bitcoin acceptance more and more common.

What this is about is Bitcoin replacing PayPal, at least as a transaction processor, a transfer mechanism. As it is PayPal is basically doomed.

What PayPal is doing is trying to switch to a new business model. Become a bitcoin exchange converting USD/EUR/etc to and from Bitcoin, and also become an online Bitcoin wallet. However as an exchange or online wallet PayPal will be one of many. They won't be the 800-lb gorilla they once were.

Not necessarily. If they are aged enough to be long term one may want to hold on to them. Spending long term assets may be something that you want to occur as an exceptional case, a manual selection, not a default automatic policy. Timing the loss is sometimes a strategic decision.

Plus if they are approaching an age where they will convert from short to long term assets one may want to hold on to them.

Again, possibly best to be a manual selection not an automatic default. For example it would be regrettable to see a long term gain offset a short term loss. Better to use a short term gain to offset a short term loss.

There are no one-size-fits-all rules as to when to spend a particular asset. There are always external and strategic circumstances to consider.

Its not really that simple either. For example LIFO (last in first out) has the advantage that it helps accumulate long term gains. So applying LIFO within the current short term gains helps a particular coin age and move from the short term to long term. Also one might want to be selective about when long term gains are spent. Again, LIFO is useful in this respect in that it prefers to spend short term.

In short LIFO may be a good default policy, maximizing and preserving the long term gains. A policy that can be overridden on that special day when one wants to cash in the long term gains.

In common scenarios the merchant uses a bitcoin exchange as an intermediary, as a payment processor. The customer never sees or touches a fiat currency (dollars, euros, etc), they only see bitcoins. The merchant never sees or touches a bitcoin, they only see fiat currency. Its only the exchange, a third party, that sells the bitcoins for fiat. The exchange accepts bitcoins from the customer and sends fiat to the merchant.

Software could automatically apply a LIFO or FIFO scheme to the coins and calculate their basis when coins are spent or sold. See http://yro.slashdot.org/commen....

If I understand things correctly, the tricky part is that you realize a taxable gain when you spend your bitcoins. Not merely when you sell them. Buy a coffee, remember to calculate and report your gain.

A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days you held them an declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.

Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income.

Using LIFO (last in first out) your basis for the 1.5 outgoing is $600 + $250 = $850. You experienced a gain of $350.

Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.

A possible advantage of LIFO is that you are spending "newer" coins first. Letting your "older" coins continue to age. If you hold these "older" coins for a year or more then they may have an advantage of being taxed at a lower rate when spent or sold.

And of course you can use any scheme to determine which coins are being used in a transaction, you are not limited to LIFO/FIFO. They are just convenient examples.

My understanding is that LLVM is skipping various "legacy" platforms. 16-bit x86 came to mind but when I googled it I found that Intel is actually working on 16-bit x86 support. Some boot loaders and emulators apparently use 16-bit code.

I was going to make a snarky Z80 comment but when reading the 16-bit Intel thread I found another potential snarker discovered that a Z80 backend for LLVM exists.

Where the LLVM devs may have no interest it seems the legacy communities or other parties may step in.

While there is no technical reason not to use LLVM I expect it won't be very popular with the GNU Hurd users.

With respect to a single match.

Now if his DNA shows up on multiple ripper victims then DNA can be good for determining culpability.

Evacuate 20 miles from the expected point of impact. Its not a dinosaur-killer, its much smaller than the meteor crater object. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/s...

Unless you are converting ice to fuel what energy is that? Kinetic energy, a glancing impact sending you off on some vector (pool table physics)?

The meteor crater impact (160 foot object) is believed to have killed everything within about 2 miles, killed half of everything out to about 8 miles, ...
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/s...

I believe that in general water impacts are considered more dangerous. Unlike air, water will transmit the energy over greater distances and the tsunami can do more damage than an impact itself.

Thermite grenades, small amounts of ordinary plastic explosives, even pistols for electronics ... sometimes the old ways are best.

Forget the James Bond movie gizmos, that only works in Hollywood.

My Dad spent some time in armored cavalry as both a blacksmith/welder and as a driver. I'm going to have to ask him how much damage he could do with a mechanic's ball been hammer and a couple of minutes.

It might be better to bomb it after capture. These vehicles are status symbols. Let the leadership, politicians and such climb in and start to use it. Then bomb it. Then bomb the most raggedy assed looking Toyota pickup trucks nearby, ones without even a heavy weapon mounted in the truck bed. That's where the experienced cadre are riding, trying to maintain a low profile.

No. Otherwise known as one particular political party's minority that has disproportionate power during primary season. Something very far from the electorate at large. Not to suggest the electorate is well informed on matters of science and engineering, but those few with deeply held political beliefs take scientific denial and misinformation to a new level.

Both political parties have their respective science deniers who will "primary" candidates who don't tow their line. Deniers have their respective articles of faith and all science and engineering to the contrary be damned. The two sets of deniers, each on their respective political extremes, are in fact so similar in their methods and circular belief systems its amazing. They truly are opposite sides of the same coin.