No it didn't.

It started when pine gap was opened in Australia, well before they "took our guns away".

(Sidenote: you can still get guns in Australia. It's actually not that hard to get a license if you want one)

Australia's value to our allies isn't just our elite special forces troops (I understand our SAS have a particularly good reputation for their work, but I'm sure the same could be said of a few other countries). It is our unique position in spying on the southern hemisphere. See, Australia started out as a listening post covering Asia, but over the past few decades we've actually got very good at it; and now in a global world while everybody is passing laws that say "you cannot spy on your own citizens", Australia's a great ally to have, since we'll gladly spy on (for example) UK citizens and hand everything we find over to the UK spy agencies... same with the US.

Most Australians who want to educate themselves are well aware of the activities of our clandestine SIGINT forces, but the thing is as a population we JUST DON'T CARE.

If you care to read what Snowden made public, you'll see Australia's involvement in international surveillance is more than just peripheral.

Also, if you do read what Snowden made public, you may very well come to the conclusion that most Australians have: These changing laws are just legalizing what's happening in secret anyway. It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal, it's going to be done in secret; so you may aswell make it legal.

Australians made the choice long ago to be friendly to a surveillance state, there's no going back on that now.

The only thing we can do is take small steps to protect ourselves, like actively resisting the centralization of records (Aussies, unless you want your medical history PUBLIC, please opt out of MyHealthRecord); and adopting technologies which make the life of our spy agencies that little bit harder (like encrypting your stuff, using monero, deleting facebook).

But if you think we could put up a meaningful resistance now, you're delusional.

Not only that, if you see the way we get behind our sporting teams, you might come to realize why we don't resist this.... Aussies rather like to be the best in the world at something. ... even if it is clandestine.

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

Obviously you haven't done much research into the space.

Bitcoin has 10 minute confirmation times, non-trivial transaction fees, is 100% public and traceable and can only be effectively mined using ASICs - which are suspected to be less efficient than those used internally by the Chinese ASIC manufacturer, Bitmain.

These aren't crippling problems for Bitcoin, but they are areas in which the currency can be improved.

The very few altcoins that aren't outright scams (of which Monero is one) solve at least one of these issue.

There are two very good reasons why botnets mine Monero rather than Bitcoin, and the fact that they do mine Monero is testament to how well Monero performs in this space.

1) Monero is ASIC resistant - meaning miners are decentralized and you can mine profitable amounts of Monero using only your CPU or GPU.
2) Monero is private - meaning the power-that-be can't 'follow the money' to catch the botnet operators.

So, as to the question of "who would use such money" - apart from criminals, anybody who wants to transact online with a currency that's completely trust-less and decentralized and equal in its utility to cold-hard cash (ie. Monero or Masari), rather than a currency that's completely trust-less and decentralized, but is no less traceable and far more public than regular-old bank transfer or western union (ie. Bitcoin).

So, I completely agree with your questioning of GP. I've no idea how anybody comes to the conclusion that "Bitcoin energy consumption is designed to decrease over time". Bitcoin is designed to lower the reward (measured in terms of BTC) over time; but that's got nothing to do with the energy consumption required to mine a block.

But, it's important to know that Bitcoin doesn't need anywhere near the current electricity demands of the global mining network to it to function.

The Proof of Work (PoW) function in Bitcoin is like a lottery - the algorithm increases or decreases complexity based on the amount of CPU cycles entered in the lottery at any given time. So, whenever someone next door to you plugs in an Antminer and starts mining Bitcoin, at this stage they are doing absolutely nothing to help Bitcoin be Bitcoin, they're just using power to enter into the Bitcoin lottery - and claim their share of the prize whenever anyone in their 'mining pool' wins the lottery.

Here's the critical point that most people either don't know, or don't want to know: If 99 out of 100 people who currently mine bitcoin turned off their miners tomorrow, Bitcoin would work PERFECTLY without them. It would use 1/100th of the current global power requirement and do EXACTLY THE SAME JOB.

If cities have a problem with people using electricity to mine Bitcoin, that's a problem with the pricing of electricity, not a problem caused by Bitcoin.

In all seriousness, yes. Litecoin is basically bitcoin v2.0 which many people are using as a liquid currency.

(... And a host of other minor altcoins)

There are technical developments which haven't yet been fully deployed (Lightning and Segwit) which will make Bitcoin usable again.

Even so, in the Crypto community, Bitcoin is generally accepted as the 'safest' store of value.

I didn't steal the Win 2000 source. But I have a copy. Do you think that makes it 'not secret'?

Yes, no longer a secret.

But I think it's still copyrighted - so an offence to have and distribute.

(IANA, laws differ between jurisdictions)

The problem with a patent is you need to tell everyone what you're doing, and how you've achieved it.

Then you're at the mercy of the system to make sure what you patented was novel enough to be afforded protection, and if knowing how you got it working one way makes it easier for people to achieve the same result using a different method, you've just given your competition a leg up.

Also - as Elon Musk said - when you're competition includes foreign governments, US Patents aren't much use.

There are legitimate reasons to rely on trade secrets.

Another V20 user here who specifically chose the phone so I could get through a long day without a charger using good old fashioned "battery swap".

Batteries in heavily-used phones wear out in less than 12 months.
Being able to buy a new one and swap it in without damaging the phone for $20 is a major selling point.

Its getting harder and harder to find a good phone with a removable battery as the years go on.

I really didn't expect Samsung to ditch it so comprehensively after their "wall huggers" advertising campaign.

That was gold.

On a side note: if the V30 uses nearly as much power as the V20 (and I expect it would), 3,330mAH is a _horribly_ small non-removable battery. You'll be looking for a charger before 3pm when the phone's still new.

I remember Stephen Conroy. He gave us an all-fiber NBN.

So what did we do? We voted him out, and we piss and moan that the LNP is killing our NBN (making good on their pre-election promise).

Who's the real idiot here?

He promised he would do that. Remember? Australia voted the LNP in, fair and square, on the policy platform: we're not labor. We will kill the NBN.

Don't blame him for following through on a pre-election promise.

Point 5: Big respect for having the maturity not to turn it into a torturous acronym.
Idiots behind the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" Act, take note.

The short answer is water.

The longer answer is crappy public transport and a general unwillingness for people to commute.

Facebook, Google and Huawei.

Okay, so who's the "Asia-based manufacturer of computer hardware," ... founded some time in the late '80s.

Thanks Google. Huawei was founded in 1987.

I agree with you on Microsoft : "multinational technology company, specializing in internet-related services and products, with headquarters in the United States,"
But IBM? : "multinational corporation providing online social media and networking services." I would've said Facebook.

So, who fits the bill for "Asia-based manufacturer of computer hardware," ... founded some time in the late '80s.

You've raised great points.

Let's start a change.org partition asking Google to remove:

- Bookmark all tabs
- Mute tab
- Unmute tab
- Close tabs to the right
- Close other tabs

Clearly, they do nothing but clutter the interface for about 95% of users.