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Comment Oddly successful investment (Score 1) 43

by RevRa (#61277968) Attached to: Dogecoin Price Surpasses 10 Cents To Reach An All-Time High

I bought $1000USD of Doge back when it took 12 of them to make a single penny just to have fun with on IRC. We set up a doge wallet bot and used tipping in Doge as a way to encourage productive/constructive comments and contributions to our little channel, as well as educating people about crypto. I ended up giving away at least half of the Doges to various channel dwellers just for the fun of it. (Using random soaks & tips of 100 doge here & there.)

Fast forward to now it's around .13c per doge and the coin I so liberally threw around like confetti actually has some value. It feels really good to have contributed in a positive way to crypto-currency awareness and to see those contributions actually have value.

I still have quite a bit of Doge left and it has oddly turned out to be one of the most entertaining & enjoyable successful investments I've made.

TO THE MOON!

Submission + - New Theory Suggests Dinosaurs Were Already Dying When Asteroid Hit (phys.org)

Submitted by the gmr
the gmr writes: Gordon Gallup, professor of Evolutionary Pyschology at the University at Albany New York, and Michael Frederick of the University of Baltimore recently published a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Ideas in Ecology and Evolution asserting that failure to develop taste aversion to toxic plants was killing off the dinosaurs long before the massive asteroid primarily believed to be the cause of their extinction struck the earth. As reported at the site phys.org, the dinosaur population had been drastically decreasing before the asteroid impact. Gallup and Frederick cited that the appearance of the first flowering plants--angiosperms--in the fossil record coincides with the gradual disappearance of the dinosaurs. "Gallup and Frederick claim that as plants were evolving and developing toxic defenses, dinosaurs continued eating them despite gastrointestinal distress." As a point of comparison for evolutionary development of taste aversions, Gallup and Frederick examined the abilities of creatures believed to be descended from dinosaurs: birds and crocodilians.

They found that the birds, rather than forming aversions to taste, developed aversions to the visual features of whatever made them sick. Still, they knew what they shouldn't eat in order to survive. In a previous study in which 10 crocodilians were fed different types of meat, some slightly toxic, Gallup discovered that like dinosaurs, crocodilians did not develop learned taste aversions.

The scientists concluded that though the asteroid played a role in the extinction of dinosaurs, the "plants had already placed severe strain on the species," Gallup said.

"The prevailing view of dinosaur extinction based on the asteroid impact implies that the disappearance of dinosaurs should have been sudden and the effects should have been widespread, but the evidence clearly shows just the opposite: Dinosaurs began to disappear long before the asteroid impact and continued to gradually disappear for millions of years afterward."

Submission + - China's Anti-Pollution Initiative Produces Stellar Results (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: China has declared war on its pollution, one of the worst on the planet, and now appears winning. Over the past four years, pollution in China’s major cities has decreased by an average of 32 percent, with some cities seeing an even bigger drop, according to professor Michael Greenstone of the Energy Policy Institute. This decline comes after several aggressive policies implemented by the Chinese government, including prohibiting the building of new coal plants, forcing existing plants to reduce their emissions, lowering the amount of automobile traffic, and closing down some steel mills and coal mines.

Comment Not always (Score 1) 463

by LilGuy (#48735903) Attached to: Writer: How My Mom Got Hacked

I worked at an MSP a while ago. We were a reseller of Datto backup devices. We had many clients who used them and were quite happy with them.

But some clients just didn't think there was a value in spending $100 a month to make sure they were fully backed up.

One client in particular rejected every backup proposal we offered. Then he got nailed with Cryptolocker which encrypted everything he had on his network. Out of desperation he paid the $500 and never heard back.

The next month we had installed a Datto and as luck would have it he got nailed by Cryptolocker AGAIN. This time we just rebuilt everything from the latest backup and he was up and running again within 2 hours. He was a perfect example of a business owner who learned the importance of his network and data the hard way and we were able to use him as an example to other clients who just weren't seeing the big picture.

Comment Re:Ironic (Score 4, Informative) 606

That's because they are basically part of the US Gov't. How many "former" GS members have been in presidential cabinet members? Lots and for years. How many members of Congress have come from or moved to GS? Lots. They don't call it the revolving door for nothing. They're inextricably connected.

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