Pretty much. Economic mobility in this country is primarily down. The upper 20% control pretty much everything. Income for the middle and lower classes have been stagnant and or dropping. If you aren't already well of it is extremely difficult to become well off. If your family is already in a whole you are most likely going to stay there.

The economic statistics are depressing. And of course the upper crust fight tooth and nail to make it worse. It isn't sustainable, but then again they don't really care. It will be interesting to see how much longer this can last before the whole thing collapses.

Exactly. Exchanges are COMPLETELY UNREGULATED. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that prevents them from just closing up shop and taking the coins with them. This is exactly the same as walking up to a stranger on the street and handing them your wallet, and should have about the same trust level.

Keep transactions small, keep only what you absolutely need on the exchange, and move everything else out as quickly as possible. It never ceases to amaze me that people don't do this. They'll say "Oh it's too inconvenient to do that!" Well losing your coins is a hell of a lot more inconvenient in my opinion.

If you play fast and lose with your coins, expect to lose them.

This is your fundamental premise and it's wrong. BitCoin is not a money making venture. It was never intended to be an "investment". It was intended as a medium of exchange. And that's all currency is.

Places like Mt. Gox and Vircurex are similar to the money markets of other fiat currencies. You could buy, sell, and trade amongst the currencies. THAT is a money making venture, but that is completely independent from the currencies itself. And since there are no central or regulating authorities on the currencies any such exchange should be treated with extreme caution.

Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes can be perpetrated using bitcoin, but the same can be said for any currencies. Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are not regulated, nor are any business associated with them. As usual, people are the problem.

People want to enjoy the games they play. They don't want a bunch of assholes telling them how much they suck and that they should kill themselves just because they don't spend 16 hours a day playing the game. That gets old really quick, and drives away a lot of gamers. I know I have better ways of enjoying my time than listening to a bunch of spoiled kids with first world problems raging at each other.

Yep. Game communities suck. From chess to starcraft, it doesn't matter. Anytime people can have near anonymity and little (if any) consequences for their actions, you're going to get a bunch of assholes who do nothing but wreck the gaming experience. Though predominantly these assholes are kids (teens-to-low twenties), there are plenty of more "mature" gamers who also behave this way.

I only play online games on occasion these days, because honestly I have better things to do than listen/read to some spoiled kid ranting and raging.

Not many, because they send their kids to US universities which get the credit. Look at the names on those research papers getting published. Last I checked, Yang, Matsumoto, and Konwa were not common last names in the US.

Of course they do. But look at the rosters. Do you think US universities and companies limit themselves to the US? On my own projects it's pretty common to have 50% or more of the team be from a foreign country. Both universities and companies pull the best they can the cheapest they can and take the credit where possible.

In this country, being able to entertain the masses pays much much better than being able to cure cancer. Being sociopathic and ruthless is rewarded much more than being a hard worker. Our culture is broken.

What exactly are the alternatives to food and water?

Hmm. No. The report isn't talking about iPads and BMWs. It's talking about basic necessities. Food, water, shelter. Once a significant portion of a population can no longer get these basic necessities, social order will begin to break down. That, in turn, increases prices which leads to more unrest. Eventually the whole thing collapses.

No it isn't. For a civilization to thrive you need resources. You need the capability and energy to acquire and refine those resources. And you need to do it in a way that can be sustained, or at least have enough resources that you won't run out in a short period of time.

Take away easy and cheap energy and civilization as we know it would collapse. Take away easy access to water and arable land and civilization as we know it would collapse. Both of these are quite likely to happen to some degree over the next century or so.

Civilization is always 3 meals away from collapse.

Jared Diamond was an optimist.

There is no way to avoid the upcoming collapse. There are too many people and organizations working (few knowingly, most ignorantly) to ensure a collapse happens. Humans are terrible at any sort of long term planning, and too many are more than happy to sacrifice long term sustainability for short term profits, consequences be damned.

Our way of life is unsustainable. We know this, but no one is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to change this. Within the next century, we're going to find this out the hard way.

You wouldn't even need a nuke. A 777 (depending on model) has a range up to 9000 miles and a cargo capacity of up to 400,000 pounds. That's enough to carry 20 MOAB type weapons (each MOAB has the explosive force of 11 tons of dynamite). Airburst that at low altitude over a major city and you're going to cause plenty of destruction. Or just launch them out of the cargo hold one at a time as you're flying.

The only real trick is getting into the airspace. You can find out the transponder ID and route for a legitimate flight and fake it. You'd only need to deviate during the last few minutes of the flight to carry out the plan. By the time someone realized something was wrong, it'd be too late to do anything about it.

There are a couple of unlikely scenarios where an attack could work, but newer coins also stop even those possibilities.

Poorly run operations fail. That shouldn't come as a surprise. And con men always prefer cash, which bitcoin basically acts like. When you buy something with bitcoin it's like wiring someone money. Once it's in their hands, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it if you get scammed. That's why for large transactions people will use a certified escrowing service.

Never send money (bitcoin or otherwise) to a party you do not know or trust.

Personal computers aren't secure enough to store banking, credit card, taxes, or other financial information either. Yet we do anyway even though we're all one keylogger or screen scrapper away from having our identities and accounts sold to the highest bidder. You protect your offline wallet the same you you protect your other sensitive information: either print it out (see paper wallet) or keep your systems security up to date.

Never use an online wallet, and if you have no other choice but to use one then move money out of them quickly and keep balances small. Any such online services are completely unregulated. In fact, all online cryptocurrency services are unregulated so always treat them with caution. People familiar with cryptocurrencies already know this and act accordingly.

No, it behaves like an unregulated currency on an open market.

Something like US dollars are regulated and have a monetary policy through the Fed. When the economy goes screaming or slams on the brakes, the Fed can change policy and act accordingly to keep the dollar from becoming a roller coaster.

With something like bitcoin, there is no central authority. There is no monetary policy. There is no central bank to throw a cold bucket of rationality on the irrational. It is completely at the mercy of the market. There's nothing to slam on the brakes in either direction when things get crazy.

The newer crypto-currencies have significantly reduced the transaction confirmation times required. However, due to the nature of the system I've yet to see any way to get around requiring the copying of the transaction journal, at least with the way things are. IF online wallets could get regulated like banks, then only the online wallets would need it. However, since that isn't the case every cryptocurrency you have will require an offline wallet and a copy (though some currencies put a "snapshot" on torrents to bootstrap new wallets).

Thanks to the huge run up in price, bitcoin mining difficulty climbed to astronomical levels. The only way you can effectively mine for a profit now is if you have big time mining rigs at your disposal. Otherwise, it's a loss. The price spike did in a few months what was supposed to happen over the course of years.

Bitcoin behaved as intended. The market did not. You can't really fault bitcoin here.

The person who wrote that line was either a certifiable genius or an authentic wacko. ;)

More seriously, this line/scene pretty much summarized the recession years of the 80's and is a pretty good summary of society in general.

This resource has nothing to do with "alarmist garbage". Its simply a tool that you can use to see what different levels of sea level rise does to the the planet. For example, you can set the map to 500m of sea level rise, which is well beyond what is physically possible.

That being said, insurance companies are one of the larger consumers of climatological information. And yes, if your inundation rate has gone up ten fold as compared to what it was 30 years ago (REGARDLESS of the cause), then your insurance rates will go up.

The carbon cycle is balanced. Disrupting the carbon cycle, as we are doing, unbalances the system. Claiming that adding Gt of sequestered carbon back into this system has no effect is idiotic. The carbon cycle can't handle it, hence the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Did you fail math? Your claim of "flat temperatures" is complete nonsense. Over the past 100 hears, CO2 has increased and temperatures have increased. I've no idea where your "flat temperatures" are coming from unless your cherry picking.

I guess all those inundation maps showing greatly increased rates of flooding are not really threats. Someone call FEMA, we got a super genius here.

Sure, if everyone were on the same page and was taking action. But when we have leaders who are legislating "this research doesn't exist because I say so" then 100 years becomes much much shorter.

There is not now, or has ever been, a single shred of peer reviewed research that claims 20 feet of sea level rise in 100 years. It doesn't exist. It isn't there. The IPCC never said it. Climate scientists have never said it. Stop being an idiot and backing up your claims with bullshit. Read the research. Understand it. Then you'll be in a much better positiontion to make your case.

I really have no words for this. Only a complete fucking moron could look at the research and events that have been occurring and say that nothing is happening. Are you even paying attention?

The thing that tans my hide is when willfully ignorant idiots such as yourself make sweeping claims when every credible shred of scientific evidence shows the complete opposite. They do not understand, and don't want to understand the impacts subtle changes in climate can have on our civilization, let alone major ones. You're content just making shit up, putting blinders on, and pretending everything is just peachy. It's ignorant asses like you who get elected, piss in the eye of science, and delay taking responsible actions that could head off issues.

George Carlin was right.