You are quite correct. However they should be criminal activities, or at a minimum taxed in such a way they are not viable ways to extract money from markets.

That sounds like a play on US anti-communism brainwashing. It just sounds like deranged ranting to someone who doesn't support communism but actually knows what it is. You have no argument, rational or not.

The thing that pains me is that we can't trust journalists either. They will outright lie to get a good story and their motivations are always suspect.

The only way to get information out is to torrent it and let the world dig though it.

Why do you thing the NSA wants to crack huawei?

1) Because the want to find out of there are deliberate holes left by the Chinese in their equipment that they should warn their own people about.

2) Because they want a head start on cracking the equipment to spy on everyone, foreign and domestic.

I've heard that belief that the US is rich and the rest of the world is poor very many times. I've travelled to a few countries and can tell you without a doubt that although there are plenty of poorer places there are plenty of richer places too. There are lots of countries with better infrastructure and better standards of living.

The US has a very positive self-image. That's a great thing. But sometimes it can cover up things that are wrong and could be fixed.

All multinationals are hypocrites. All advertising is an attempt at making people believe things that are at best only part true.

If you give your data away you don't have it anymore. Don't give Google, Microsoft, or anyone else all your private email.

Microsoft have the strong advantage that they are no good at it. You have no privacy if you give your email to either of these companies.

The traditional slashdot approach was to run your own mail server. I don't know how common that is any more but I still do it.

Google read the email of a third party that that one their employees sent an email to. Google have the ability to, and willingness to, read private email of people who use gmail who are not otherwise connected to google. Gmail isn't to be trusted.

All world currencies and share prices are based on wishful thinking. You are not going to get the gold standard back.

That's so far from the truth on all points it's hard to respond to.

You are exactly right, but don't underestimate the effects of image. Why not just add a 1. to the start of the number? Sun did pretty much that with their Solaris version numbers.

That can't happen. Either the transaction is accepted by the network or it's not and you can back out.

That's just like saying cash in a bank vault isn't perfectly secure because you might take it out and give it to con men. It's perfectly safe to use bitcoin, it's not perfectly safe to give it away to snake oil merchants who make empty promises. You have to check who you are dealing with in any matter that involves anything of value. Anyone can setup a respectable looking website.

One pound coins are unsafe and have been for some time, the level of risk is normally acceptable though. Faking physical money has been going on since coin clippers would clip off the edges of roman coins to melt down and make new coins. Don't forget all those fake dollar bills out there? Not seen them? Oh yes you have, you just didn't recognize them.

That kind of thing is mathematically impossible with bitcoin.

Heh. Windows users. Heh.