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Comment Please, no more "Bitcoin Rocket/Crash" headlines (Score 1) 296

by eamacnaghten (#53610097) Attached to: Bitcoin Is Crashing
I get a little board of "Bitcoin is rocketing" or "Bitcoin is crashing" headlines. Niether is true, and never was. Bitcoin is in effect a (virtual) commodity, but with a much lower cap than others such as gold. This means that small things, like Brexit, or the fall of the Chinese Yuan, or the discontinuation of Indian cash bank notes and such will effect the price in a major way, with the inevitable exageration of the market by speculators, followed by the resulting corrections when these minor bubbles burst. This means Bitcoin value in effect goes up and down like a yo-yo. However, bitcoin is sound. The commodity aspect is there and is secure, so it will never go back to zero or anything. The general movement of Bitcoin is up at a gradual pace with a few whooshes in either direction as described above. It is not, nor ever has been, a guaranteed wealth creator nor a crashing pudsey/pyramid scheme.
United States

The Chip Card Transition In the US Has Been a Disaster (qz.com) 675

Posted by msmash from the ramification dept.
Ian Kar, writing for Quartz: Over the last year or so in the U.S., a lot of the plastic credit cards we carry around every day have been replaced by new one with chips embedded in them. The chips are supposed to make your credit and debit cards more secure -- a good thing! -- but there's one little secret no one wants to admit: The U.S.'s transition to chip cards has been an utter disaster. They're confusing to use, painstakingly slow, less secure than the alternatives, and aren't even the best solution for consumers. If you've shopped in a store and used a credit card, you've noticed the change. Retailers have likely asked you to insert the chip into the card reader, instead of swiping. But reading the chip seems to take much longer than just swiping. And on top of that, even though many retailers now have chip reading machines, some of them ask us just the opposite -- they say not to insert the card, and just swipe. It seems like there's no rhyme or reason to the whole thing.
Image

Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687

Posted by samzenpus from the duck-and-cover dept.
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
Idle

Hand Written Clock 86

Posted by samzenpus from the up-to-the-minute dept.
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

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