Years ago, in our business, we used BTC as a currency; now we're using USDT. One concrete example: we're in the EU, and we have a programmer in Kenya. It's complex and slow to wire him his wages through the regular banking system, and we've been paying him with crypto all along. It's simple, fast, easy. For some, it's an investment because they want to speculate, but it still remains one of the best way to transfer value to countries which are not connected with us when it comes to banking. Just because we don't want the hassle to fill forms, justify why we're doing payments, etc. doesn't mean anything nefarious is going on. He works, he's owed wages, and we have a solid system to pay him. This is done legally, shows on the balance sheet on our end, and we don't have to deal with banks' stupid questions, delays and costs at the same time. This is not a theoretical use case, we've been doing that for years.

e-scooters have been banned here for 6 months. I have enjoyed them, it was fun and practical, but in reality I also hated them. I live in a very dense tourist area and the scooters were used carelessly, passing fast right next to pedestrians causing near collisions on a regular basis, they were left blocking sidewalks, in front of doors, packed between parked cars sometimes, etc. It looked like many of the users never cared where they put the scooter after use, and it became a nuisance. They implemented gps based speed limit in the pedestrian areas, but it didn't solve the issue of where they're left after use. Having also lived in Madrid, I can also conclude that its center is not a good fit for them. Maybe the peripheral areas, but the pedestrian zones, definitely not.

How does that work exactly? I understand burning the oil and storing it under the ground, but how can the tank hold heat?

Maybe with limited computing power, there will be a growing market for video games that focus on the gaming aspects instead of fancy graphics. I miss the 8-bits and 16/32-bits era!

I always thought that platform operated on investor dreams as they put more cash in...

I deal with people in various countries. For example I have one programmer in Kenya. How am I going to do a bank transfer to Kenya? it's complicated, slow and expensive. When we collect payment, we use crypto as well. Why? it's fast, it's cheap, I don't have to do paperwork, I don't have to deal with office hours, I don't have to deal with someone that needs to check something, or ask supporting documentation, etc and the received doesn't have to go through the same circus either. I want to send money to X, I do it, it's fast, cheap and it happens right away. Regulations slow things down, increase costs, etc. There are many companies who require a lot of full time staff just to handle compliance and documentation: this is an insane waste. Don't want money laundering? make a better tax structure.

You mean the most common vaccine developed in Germany without US money? For decades, I was half laughing that we need a virus that kills stupid people. I just thought it would be more fun and wish it didn't have collateral damage...

Or, perhaps a trip out of the US would have showed you that countries with socialized medicine also conduct research and development. You don't need a slave population and half of the country looking like the 3rd world to do research. In practice there is more research coming out of the EU than the US and all EU countries have socialized medicine.

Just do it, I'd love it.

It's been 30% since day one and people chose to develop for iOS and now they're complaining. If they don't like it, they can support other larger brands. Personally, I like the walled garden approach because each time I use my gf's Android phone I find that most of the apps are much less polished, have less consistent UIs, etc it's a different world and different way of thinking. That walled garden keeps things cleaner, and I'm ok if we have 50% of the developers quit it as well.

and now, I can imagine people are already on it, trying to figure out how to exploit one of the last natural reservoirs...

Fees are dynamic and based on offer (capacity) and (user) demand. BTC has been expensive for a while; The Ethereum blockchain has been stupidly high priced for long and I don't get why people still use it. For those not into crypto, the different chains support different protocols. So the ETH chain is supporting many different coins. So do other chains, like the BSC that supports the same protocol, at a much higher speed and a dramatically lower cost. You can compare that to Visa and Mastercard. If tomorrow Visa charged 50% transaction fees, you could do a payment through a mastercard card and still use the same money; it's a bit crude of an analogy since you need to move the coins from one chain to another one time. Starting a project using the ETH chain is stupid, the fees have been high for very long.

wait until you see the monitor stand :D https://www.apple.com/shop/pro...

I like the captcha idea; one captcha at the time of purchase and per pair of shoes should solve the problem quite well

Years ago, I needed a laptop quickly and best buy had the model I wanted in stock. When I showed up at the store, I was told that they only had models which had been 'optimized' by geek squad and there was a cost for that unwanted service. They wouldn't roll things back either. I found later on that this was their new scam. So I didn't get the laptop, and I vowed to never purchase anything from them ever again. This was over a decade ago and to me they don't exist anymore when I need something.