Do you realize "conspiracy theory" doesn't mean "false"?

If you want to get hyped, I recommend the movie Europa Report.

Seconded. A great little film.

bitgodthrowaway 5 hours ago [dead]

These privacy bugs are well known to the people who put them to use.

I'm not planning on going to America because a) I'm more interested in seeing other places (sorry) and b) It's impossible anyway. But let me tell you something: When I leave, I won't be depriving "my own society" (whatever that means) of anything, because that's how much value I can produce here, with all the corruption and bureaucratic obstacles.

And it will remain so because all those who could possibly affect change are taking the easy road to America and compounding our returns and advantages.

How easily we tell other people to martyr themselves for our ideals.

It's not idiotic, that's why there is a Bitcoin fund, and soon there will be a Bitcoin ETF.

If being an expert in computer security isn't "specialized knowledge", I don't know what it is.

You're not following.

I'm not arguing whether investors right now buy bitcoin directly or through a fund. Obviously they do both.

I'm arguing that NOBODY buys bitcoin through a non-fund bitcoin company that has actual products, like payment processing, consumer brokerage, wallet etc, which is what this new company is about. It's not a fund, it's a company with a product.

i.e. nobody invests in jet fuel by investing in an airline, despite the fact that all airlines trade in jetfuel. They either buy jetfuel (rare considering its properties) or buy into a jetfuel fund, etf, index.

It's just completely ridiculous and not true and unsupported by any evidence, that investors would want exposure to the price of bitcoin by investing in say Coinbase or Circle or Bitpay. They're two completely separate investments.

This is a company that will build hardware and software. It has engineers, management, marketing people, customer service, offices, warehouses, factories, supply chains. It has a product and it has costs. To invest in all of those costs to get exposure to the bitcoin price is ridiculous, again you either buy bitcoin directly, or you buy through a fund like I mentioned in my last post.

As for needing to be an expert in computer security to buy and store bitcoin, hardly, but that's another discussion.

> Paypal hates it, as does India's Reserve Bank.

I can't believe this doesn't immediately make you think that maybe, just maybe there is something good about Bitcoin. Are you 0K with the central bank stealing wealth from you and your family through the debasing of your currency? Are you 0K with working your ass off so that bankers and other powerful people can live a life of wealth and pleasure? How can you take advise from such people?

"Bitcoin is bad, don't use it! It's a drug currency... very shady... also, terrorism!"

That is basically what every central bank said to the people in their country.

"Hi everyone, I just heard about Bitcoin... And I'm here to fix it"

That's not really a possibility, it's just your desire to see Bitcoin go down. I don't know why there are so many people so salty about Bitcoin.

Yeah really, the only other time I saw a group of people so salty about something is Google glass. There is just something about bitcoin and glass that makes people go NaCL.

Which popular language nowadays doesn't have closures? Even the so hated (by HN) PHP has had that for many years already.

Python is often claimed not to have closures but that isn't really true, what it doesn't have is anonymous functions. It does have a lambda statement, but that is limited to a single statement.

So what you end up writing is more akin to:

    def multiplier_maker(a):
      def temp(b):
        return b * a
      return temp

That is because Python allows you to declare a function anyware, even inside other functions.

And if you want to emulate static variables in a function, you can do that:

    def counter():
        counter.x += 1
        return counter.x

    counter.x = 0
    counter()
    > 1
    counter()
    > 2

Beware! singleton variables, mutable state, etc.

You can do it by closing over a variable as well. Python closes over things just fine, it just has problems rebinding variables in outer scopes that aren't the global one. Here, I just make the variable a container, so I can alter a value inside it, instead of rebinding it ( only python2 has this problem, python3 has a "nonlocal" keyword to work around this in the language )

    >>> def counter():
    ...   x = [ 1 ]
    ...   def count():
    ...     y = x[ 0 ]
    ...     x[ 0 ] += 1
    ...     return y
    ...   return count
    ... 
    >>> count = counter()
    >>> count()
    1
    >>> count()
    2
    >>> count()
    3
    >>> count()
    4
    >>> 
    >>> otherCount = counter()
    >>> otherCount()
    1
    >>> otherCount()
    2
    >>> count()
    5
    >>> count()
    6
    >>> otherCount()
    3
    >>>

> what it doesn't have is anonymous functions

If it's not anonymous it's not a closure though.

Bullshit. It closures around its environment, it is a closure.

Python.

Under what definition of closure does python lack them?

That happens everywhere to some degree. In corrupt countries it's very common that politicians announce the building of big schools and hospitals, but the projects are never finished. The construction companies bribe the politicians to get the contracts, and then it doesn't even matter whether they ever complete the job, no one will control that.