Based on my limited understanding, the block size is fixed at 1MB and each transaction is around 226 bytes. A block occurs every 20 minutes, so bitcoin can only have about 232 transactions per minute, and transactions are (some how) prioritized by age and fee. It is well known the miners will flood the transaction back log to increase the fees, because the miners claim the additional fees.

SegWit, which went into effect in August (?), I think was supposed to reduce the transaction size, but keep the block size the same. SegWit also allows some sort of Lightning Network, which is basically a service that will confirm transaction off of the block chain faster for a higher fee. The Bitcoin Cash people rejected this as being too proprietary and hence their fork.

The fork Bitcoin2X a.k.a. SegWit2X increased the block size to 2MB.

I am not sure what Bitcoin Cash did, but as stated they rejected SegWit, and must have increased the block size, but they are handling the increased transaction volume fine.

AFAIK, all other Bitcoin forks (Gold, Platinum) are money grabbing schemes.

The recommended fee is 0.000339 BTC or about $4.41 at current values [1]. Fee are the same if you are transferring less than a US penny or more than a million dollars. For any transaction, you can use less fee and wait (much) longer or a larger fee have a shorter transaction time.

Fees have really been the driving force behind the recent Bitcoin forks. Some argue that bitcoin should be a store of value (not me) rather an a tool for transferring money. Independent of your opinion on the fork Bitcoin Cash, I believe they are doing it right with transaction fees [2], which currently is about $0.15 per transaction, again independent of transaction amount.

1. https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/
2. https://bitinfocharts.com/comp...

When I lived in San Diego, my biggest complaint about In-N-Out Burger is that they never have enough parking spaces and their drive through line is so long that it also blocks parking spaces.

Now they are taking their limited parking and giving spaces to Tesla-only car charging. Own a Chevy Bolt/Volt, Ford Energi, Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, no charging for you.

I found a better article on the elements that go into batteries. The Tesla CTO is quoted as being worried more about Cobalt. Though the Tesla batteries do contain Nickel, but the Nissan Leaf does not.

https://electrek.co/2016/11/01...

I thought we moved from NiMH batteries to Lithium ion in cars. Only the lowly no EV range hybrids use nickel. Correct me if I am wrong.

Give everyone a private key on their birth certificate, and publish a public key as the new SSN.

Good point, I looked it up and I was wrong: "Normal transaction takes up to 2.5 minutes to get included in a block. If you use instantsend transaction gets confirmed within one second." Also, I guess they dropped the InstantSend fee to $0.20.

Ethereum might have a fast system too.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/dashp...

Blame the miners. Miners receive the transaction fees whenever they receive the block award. So, the miner have been trying their best to keep the fees as high as possible. They do this by creating several small transactions they basically send the coins to themselves creating a backlog. Part of this whole forking bitcoin is related to this.

Personally, I support Dash because they have very low fees 0.0001 Dash (=$0.03) for normal transactions and you can have ultra fast transactions with several confirmations at less than 15 minutes for 0.01 dash (=$3).

I have a small stake in Dash, so do your own research. Many of the teenage crytpo-nuts hate dash, but it run by many slashdot-aged (middle-aged) developers and does not get into flamewars.

Gimp 2.9 has had it since at least Nov 2015, but has yet to make the stable branch.

http://ninedegreesbelow.com/ph...

Interested Wikipedia article that tracks the richest over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Interestingly, Bill Gates was the richest from 2000 to 2007, when is fortune kept going down every year. Carlos Slim and Warren Buffet over taking him sometime and then in 2013 Gates is back on top.

The story is that they can now include LAME , because the patents have expired. Before Fedora had no mp3 support at all.

Good movie, but I hate the Trinity kisses Neo for him to realize he is the One scene. No matter how you interpret it, it is just so lame at a crucial turning point in the movie. Now, whenever I re-watch the movie, I get so annoyed with this scene.

Trinity : Neo..I'm not afraid anymore! The Oracle told me I would fall in love, and that man, the man that I loved, would be The One. So, you see, you can't be dead...you can't be... because I love you....you hear me? I love you...

She leans over and kisses him

As she says this, the blow echoes deep in Neo's mind. In the Matrix, his eyes snap open. Trinity screams as his life monitors jump back to life. Tank and Morpheus stare, in disbelief.

Trinity : Now get up!!

Neo sits up, trying to focus. He stands up, and the Agents turn around, staring at him, also in disbelief. Agent Smith grimaces and aims his rifle at Neo. He fires.

Neo : ...No...!

As Agent Smith fires, Neo just puts his hand out. The bullets slow down and stop in front of him. Neo looks at them, and picks one up. He looks at it, and then drops it to the floor. He looks at the rest, and moves his head down. They all fall to the ground. The Agents stare, and all take a step back.

Tank : How!?!

Morpheus : He is... The One...

How about we work towards a cure instead of blowing money on problems that have already been solved?

Apple has zero experience working in a wet lab. So, Apple puts money where it does have experience.
Further, Curing biological diseases is hard. When Microsoft offered to debug cancer, Derek Lowe had this quote:

Unfortunately the world of code and computational hardware, as important, useful, and lucrative as it is, is just a sandbox compared to the real physical universe, of which living creatures are just a tiny little part. But biology has no debugging programs, no annotations, no manuals. It wasn't written by humans -- in fact, as far as we know, it wasn't written by anyone at all, it "just grew" in a process that has no good counterpart to the ways that humans generally get things done.

Which I think sums it up pretty well.

I like your CentOS and Fedora comment and have been using for years. But I have decided to move to debian because Fedora updates too fast. CentOS update too slow and its default kernel does not include the drivers I need for my htpc. It is not too much effort to compile your own kernel but the task gets old real quick when you have to keep up with security patches.

Using the cloud is the opposite of low latency. Ugh.