I'd like to see Runit [1] and S6 [2] get more attention.
Docs and easy-to-apply tutorials would be a godsend in this area. I too really want to replace systemd on Arch. Currently, this is an uphill battle due to so many packages having systemd service files, and the fact that I've never replaced an init system before makes things that much more daunting.
If only there were more information out there, or more ready-made solutions [3], I'm sure there are plenty who would be ready and willing to give this a shot.
It's not risky in and of itself. It's risky because scammers are getting _really_ good at scamming people on localbitcoins. I've seen stories of criminals printing up fake receipts from Chase. I've also seen stories of con artists who will trick a completely unrelated third party into sending cash to your localbitcoin's bank account, then telling you "cash sent", meanwhile the rightful owner of the cash has no idea their money is being used for these purposes and will inevitably open up a fraud suit with their bank. And then there's people paying with counterfeit bills. Not exactly a walk in the park. Then again, I guess this is all to the buyer's advantage, but this higher risk is reflected in higher prices than what you'll find on vetted online exchanges.
Actually, depending on your respective tax authority's treatment of Bitcoin taxes, it's more like:
A pays B (A now owes taxes on realized gains)
B pays C (B now owes taxes on realized gains)
C pays D (C now owes taxes on realized gains)
However, as a commodity with limited supply, BTC may still be a good store of value.
Basically what you guys need to realize is Bitcoin only makes sense when you completely disregard "the system". If nobody pays any taxes, nobody does AML/KYC, and everybody uses BTC ubiquitously, then yes, it's a cheaper and more efficient system. What irks me to no end as a proponent of Bitcoin is how many people are into Bitcoin nowadays purely as a get-rich-quick scheme or because it's en vogue. There are real, significant societal conversations that need to be had on a massive scale before Bitcoin makes sense for the average person, and most people just aren't willing to bring that conversation to the forefront. Too busy raising VC.
Ever heard the term, "don't knock it til you try it"? What do you have to lose by trying free operating systems? It costs nothing to run GNU/Linux in VirtualBox on Windows, and learning to interact with your machine from the command line will expand your skillset and your horizons, making you a better programmer and more valuable team player. Regardless, you're bashing people for using free operating systems in a security context, which is just asinine. This is not the holy war you're making it out to be.
What do you need Windows for anyway? Especially in a "secure computing" context, modern distros are cheaper, easier and quicker to install than Windows, and yes, often more secure. Plus, learning GNU/Linux will make you a better programmer and a more capable team player. What do you have to lose?
Facebook's market cap is $63,000,000,000. If the market cap of Bitcoin were just 10% of Facebook, each Bitcoin would be worth about $500. 1% and it's about $50.
Can a global financial system conceivably give the world just 10% of the value of Facebook? Because just ten percent ... and one BTC is $500.
I couldn't have possibly imagined that Bitcoin would soar so quickly. In all honesty, the infrastructure has NOT improved noticeably over the last 6 months. This runup in price was fueled by shameless speculation, or possibly the Chinese seeking to evade capital controls. I've followed the Bitcoin market closely since the time I made that post, and what you'll notice is the price moves up considerable amounts based on miniscule volume. Liquidity is dire.
I would advise very cautious optimism if not pessimism at this point. Is Bitcoin worth really 20% of Facebook right now? That's a tough question, especially considering the open regulatory question in America, which I personally don't see doing so hot.
I think Bitcoin was a fantastic, visionary buy at $10-$50 back when nobody was taking it seriously, and I enthusiastically stated as much to everyone who would listen. However, at this point I'm telling people they've missed the boat. There's still plenty of value in Bitcoin, don't get me wrong. It's just that this run up was 100% speculative, and based on people hoarding coins because the price was going up. Not the sign of a healthy foundation.
I've provisioned and maintained dozens of servers all running Arch, and currently have four home PCs running it. I've found Pacman to be one of the easier and more pleasant package managers to live with.
You can sort through tens of thousands of existing PKGBUILDs on the AUR [1], which typically makes it quick and easy to start packaging software for Arch. You can even sync a flat text file database of all official Arch packages with abs [2]. The ability to reverse engineer every PKGBUILD for a wide variety of software is a major plus in my book.
Writing a PKGBUILD takes roughly the same effort as compiling software from source with a bash script. PKGBUILDs are simple to write, and there's just enough "magic" in Pacman to keep things sane.
Nine times out of ten, the PKGBUILD writing process boils down to copy/pasting directions from README or INSTALL files. It's like a bash script, except more 'done-for-you'. Finding exact dependencies is typically a cinch with the AUR and tools like packer.
Maintaining a rolling distro can be a labor of love, but if you love the system, you'll find it may significantly increase your overall sanity. It's another way of doing things, but I consider choice of distro to be one of the more important decisions to make, and IME, Arch has been such a significant departure from other distros that not trying it in a serious capacity is roughly equivalent to not trying Vim / Emacs ever in your career. Which is to say, I think it's a mistake not to at least see what it may offer you, especially if you're in any doubt.
I hope my positivity is only seen as that: positivity, and not overzealous dedication to one specific toolset. Arch probably isn't a panacea, nor will I claim that it's a perfect fit for your way of doing things. But I have never found something as pleasant as Pacman to work with. In addition, I never would've even tried Arch if I hadn't been slightly flustered by the seemingly irrational exuberance random sysadmins displayed for the system.
A solution exactly like what you've just described is in the works. Zyocoin is a P2P Bitcoin exchange utilizing multi-signature issued "debt", where debt can be BTC, USD, EUR, or bananas.
Real contracts are created with verifiable blockchain-based timestamping.
Debt is issued with colored coins.
Ripple attempts to do something like this but I feel it must be done natively on the blockchain to see widespread acceptance.
Python programmers wanted. Send a BitMessage to BM-oq7iLGGH7e7JJaqiTcUj1qGQYxeZVo65b; IM [email protected] or join #zyocoin on Freenode.
Really? Have you had extensive, first-hand experience with Rick Simpson oil? Are you prepared to tell me there's zero medicinal benefits to it?
Listen, there's just not going to be scientific proof behind a mostly illegal substance with legions of powerful people incentivized to stop it from growing in popularity. Feel free to evaluate the video testimonials though: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwBs_ihArc1lCYDym-DH4...
Bitcoin shares many similarities with hemp oil, you can always tell the armchair opinions from the guys who actually use it.
I considered your points. You pretend as if the claims of early adopters are to blame for fueling the recent "frenzy". Really? Are you really saying a group of early adopters are entirely to blame for a market appraising a formerly unknown asset?
If you lacked the vision, the luck, the timeliness, etc. of an early adopter, fair's fair. Pay them their respects. I still kick myself for not having my wits about me when I first heard about Bitcoin.
As for your alternative, I don't see why not. You could create a clone of Bitcoin today, why not do it yourself? They did that with Litecoin, too. In fact the author of Litecoin created it because he felt "wronged" the same way you do now. He felt as if too many people missed the boat with Bitcoin, and clearly people should have a second chance of early adopting such a revolutionary concept.
I'm sorry, but your comment seems blinded a bit by ... I'm not sure what the right word is? angst, self-hatred, jealousy? There's a lot of negativity in general coming from the HN crowd towards BTC, I'm guessing because everyone here was more than capable of installing the original Satoshi client and mining early on, but chose not to or didn't hear about it. With BTC now on the rise, of course it all seems so obvious, and oh so unfair.
Everyone had the chance to mine in the earliest of days, that's certainly true for me and I sometimes kick myself about it. Hindsight is 20/20.
Yeah, some guy recommended I mine back in the earliest of days. "If only I knew then what I know now" ... hahah. So sick to think that my old Core 2 Duo could've made me a millionaire. I was turned off by the ugliness of the bitcointalk forum, and decided it wasn't worth the time to understand the Satoshi client.
I don't think it's right to get on the case of the earliest bunch though for not being more egalitarian. How could Satoshi have been more fair to you? After all, nearly everybody had the short-lived opportunity to mine 50 BTC blocks with ease. Clearly Satoshi believed in his concept more than most of us did, and deemed it worthy of putting in lots of effort into mining. He did his part to warn the world of his invention. Fair's fair.
Bitcoins have at least some value on the Deep Web, the stock market is the ultimate castle in the air investment. That doesn't mean people shouldn't use it, but it's a pretty poor investment.
I continue to watch the Wall Street bubble unfold, fascinated, popcorn at the ready. In the end it'll be like sending herds of cattle through a cheese grater.
Facebook's market cap is $63,000,000,000. If the market cap of Bitcoin were just 10% of Facebook, each Bitcoin would be worth about $500. 1% and it's about $50.
Can a global financial system conceivably give the world just 10% of the value of Facebook? Because just ten percent ... and one BTC is $500.
Oh, but clearly society demands Farmville, you say? Clearly we don't need a new financial system ... more than we need to know who Joe Bob hooked up with this weekend.
As if there's no pain being solved here by Bitcoin. As if there are no problems with USD or the EUR. As if Cypriots are just pissed off over spilled milk right now. After all it's only a "haircut".
It's so funny to see how most people on HN are here to make businesses that scale infinitely. What could possibly, POSSIBLY, scale faster and more widely than an open source global currency? The price increase in the last month represents a trickle of people around the globe exchanging fiat for BTC. Just a trickle. Whereas most people are obviously hesitant to invest. That would include most people on HN.
The supply of Bitcoin is ridiculously tiny. Only 11,000,000 in total are in circulation today, let alone available for purchase on the market.
Sellers wanted. I acquired enough BTC to make me happy without being over the top - and I'm not ever exchanging it back into any other ass backwards asset class, gold and silver (and USD) included. Early adopters of BTC are from what I can tell mostly the same way, if crazier than I am.
Bitcoin is valuable because the world desperately needs to escape the current financial system. Individual sovereignty and financial privacy are the most scarce resources on the planet, bar none. It's not too late to acquire BTC, put it in a brainwallet and carry around $10k at all times. Now let's all go back to flinging monkey poop at consumers over the Internet.
I'd like to see Runit [1] and S6 [2] get more attention.
Docs and easy-to-apply tutorials would be a godsend in this area. I too really want to replace systemd on Arch. Currently, this is an uphill battle due to so many packages having systemd service files, and the fact that I've never replaced an init system before makes things that much more daunting.
If only there were more information out there, or more ready-made solutions [3], I'm sure there are plenty who would be ready and willing to give this a shot.
1: http://smarden.org/runit/
2: http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6/
3: https://github.com/chneukirchen/ignite
3: https://github.com/rubyists/runit-services