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Comment Re:Unmatched Liquidity (Score 1) 26

Right now the drive to diversify is entirely political.
Ok great you hate Trump, congrats.
The FACT is that there is no serious alternative to the USD as a reserve currency.
The currencies mentioned (euro, yuan) are indeed probably the closest in a basically empty field.
The yuan is controlled by a deeply dishonest tyrannical government that hasn't authentically reported financial information for decades. The EU is an anti democratic talking shop that can't manage to stand up a coast guard, much less manage a monetary policy.

Don't get me wrong, there are major, major issues with how the US handles economics. Inter party vacillations every 4 years. Dishonesty about inflation or economic data when it's politically inconvenient. But to the point of real-world contexts critical to underpin faith in a currency, the US remains economically dominant, more militarily secure than all others, and well supplied with food, water, oil, and raw materials.

Comment what is a reserve? (Score 2) 67

a government or anyone may decide they need a reserve of something in case it later becomes unaccessible when needed. When can a government *need* BTC? Needing oil or food or water or weapons or gold is understandable, those are real things and it is possible to run out of these items and be in a position where access is limited.

If one "needs" crypto currency they may either purchase it in the market freely or just start their own, even Trump has done this on multiple occasions.

Note, it says "a reserve", not a speculative asset to gamble on its price.

Comment Re:What's the range? (Score 2) 35

The other post linked the study.
As far as I can tell yes, your supposition that there's "averaging" going on is correct. Insofar as I can see (I skimmed it, certainly) they report roughly similar quantities of data from makes and females going into their analysis, but after that it's all lumped together.
Further, while they acknowledge in their analysis that their data is biased toward West, anglophone, rich cultures, I feel like they universalize their conclusions a little too freely.
Really fascinating stuff here, but imo their data is a bit too summarized.

Comment Re:This is not a job for a corporation to do (Score 1) 115

"why did we continue to feed them?"
Did you forget about how the whole industrial Western world runs on oil and that alternatives didn't meaningfully exist until the last decade (and even now they're basically edge cases)?

It would that spoil your little "durr it's all them corporations fault!" oversimplification?

Comment Re:Stop now (Score 1) 115

yes, actually yes. I would do it differently though, I would use sodium and burn it in water to create the particulate matter, this would accomplish more than one goal, it would block a percentage point of the Solar energy and would percipitate into the ocean water deacidifying it. If done xorrectly, maybe as NaK alloy it can also be used to generate power while burning in water.

Comment There's only one solution (Score 2) 115

1) Produce an excess of energy using methods that do not release CO2

2) Use the excess energy to sequester atmospheric CO2

3) Repeat until atmospheric CO2 levels are at pre-industrial levels

There are no shortcuts. If you skip step one and attempt step two, you have a net increase in CO2 release. If you avoid this whole plan by adjusting insolation, you get a break on the temperature while we inevitably ignore the continually increasing CO2 and all the other issues it brings, and you make us dependent on maintaining the new artificial insolation management system - and when it one day fails, there will be that much more CO2 to deal with.

You may also want to consider that with rising CO2 levels comes cognitive impairment. It won't be much of an issue outside with the numbers we're talking about, but indoor air (which we spend an awful lot of time breathing) only reduces CO2 levels by mixing with outdoor air. The indoor CO2 levels are always higher, and that will get worse as outdoor levels rise.

Comment Does it run 90% or better of Windows programs? (Score 1) 116

If not, then it's going to remain a niche thing like the HUNDREDS of active linux distros.

Don't get me wrong, for certain things, particularly things that have a person of high computer-literacy to maintain it, some linux is probably great.

OTOH most people and businesses want their computers to serve as tools, not necessarily their "hobby" to constantly futz with. They don't really give much of a shit how much of their meaningless daily work is hoovered up by MS.

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