Recreate

Wondering if anyone here knows about bitcoins or litecoins, and has them? 
 
Here's a PBS idea channel about them.

 

(Paraphrased from the video, If you don't wish to watch it)

If you don't know what bitcoins/litecoins are, bitcoins are traded by people who have ALL AGREED that they have a value.

 

They are a new, digital, decentralized, peer-to-peer CRYPTO currency. It doesn't rely on ANY physical note. It isn't regulated, controlled, or anything really by a central issuing authority like the federal reserve, the bank of england, or 日本銀行  (Bank of Japan), nor any government, company, or country in any way whatsoever. It is self-reliant!
 
Even though NOBODY is in charge, you can't just make infinite free money. In order for a currency to have value, it has to be scarce. You can only print, mine, or mint a certain amount. Bitcoins are generated by networked computers solving complex cryptographic puzzles.
 
It's sort of like if you're asking your computer to solve a rubik's cube with a side for every color in the visual spectrum.
 
This hard work generates bitcoins. This maintains not only scarcity, but market stability.
 
BItcoins can be exchanged for USD and any other form of currency, and back again, making if fully exchangeable.

 

Everything said above also applies to litecoins. They are the currently two most successful crypto currencies. Bitcoins are like a gold standard, and litecoins are like a silver standard.

 

Anyways, what do you think? I think that cryptocurrency will revolutionize economics, since it's no longer got ANY of the baggage of traditional currency with ALL of the benefits.

 

Well, I've figured out how to run the backlight. on it now. It works nicely on only 5V and little current. What should I do with it? These are my ideas.

 

1. take the LCD off of the assembly and use it as a diffused light source lamp.

2. take the CCFL lamp out of the assembly and use it as a regular lamp

3. do dangerous things with the high voltage 

 

I could also buy an LCD controller for my LCD off ebay .. for $30. A bit expensive. Not sure if that's worth it for a 800x600 13" display. 

 

What do you think?

So earlier today, Someone on craigslist contacted me saying they wanted to trade my laptop for a MacBook Pro 2010 works perfect.

Immediately suspicious.

Ok, so I go through the regular procedure, Ask for serial number, OK NOT STOLEN and its real. Asked for photos of the about this mac screen. Ok, it works and it's got a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo and wait what? 2GB 667Mhz RAM?
The guy was immediately asking me to meet today for the exchange, furthermore the guy was asking to trade for my laptop with $50 on top. My laptop is an HP DV4 from 2009-2010, 2.2Ghz T6600 core 2 duo, 6GB DDR3, bla bla. You get the picture.

Then I asked for the model no, It was MacBook 1,1. Now i've seen apple stuff before, and I know their naming conventions, and so I was immediately suspicious, as that means it's the first MacBook. So I looked it up, and it turns out it was manufactured in 2006! Bloody hell.

I told him this and he acted dumb, he said "might be newer".

Once again he insisted, "can we do this now?".

Now, Me, as a craigslist businessman, refer to the local market value of the computers. Since his is a mac, everyone loves macs, it'd be a great candidate for selling expensively after polishing. Making me a bit of profit. (as I got my current computer through such a scenario)

So, I asked when and where we can meet. The guy said he didn't have a car and was working at his mom's business, he also said he was 17, so I'd have to go to him.

Then he said he'd be home alone till 1 AM. ಠ_ಠ

I reply, "Ok, look, dude, I'm not a girl, and you're not gay." I didn't actually say that. What I actually said is that "I want to meet in a safe public location."

He replied:

I'm 17.. what could I possibly do. Sorry you're making this a huge deal and its not. Thanks for your time ill try other offers.

Ok, a bit suspicious. I apologize and tell him that there's often shady people on craigslist, and that if he is interested we can meet in a public location for an exchange.

He says he's not interested anymore.

Good greif, did I just doge a bullet there? The guy INSISTED in meeting at night, at his address or house, Lied about the year of the macbook, and "was no longer interested" after I told him I needed to meet in a public and safe location. They also tried very hard to convince me they were 17 and harmless. Who knows what kind of person this was!

Here's the full log of his side of the conversation if anyone wants to review it, as well as to warn anyone who happens to google his phone number. Watch out. Crazy people out there.

<CONVERSATION REMOVED>

MOD EDIT: I have removed the conversation as it contains personal information (a phone number) which I do not believe should be made public.

A while ago while going around the internet, I found something for you to Do Online Now, Guys. It's cool site, that's primary aim is hosting a variety of flash-based cognitive tests. They have tests that measure attentional performance (Visual reaction time, auditory reaction time, visual go/no go reaction time, etc), perceptual performance (fast counting of dots), executive (stroop effect testing), item span (breif memory), and memory (not so breif memory).

It's name is "Cognitive Fun", http://cognitivefun.net/

I took all of the tests, and here's my Pentagon-Graph.



Kinda pathetic but at least I did better than most other people at two things. xD Gotta work on the other things.

If my dot is inside of the pentagon, it means i performed less than average, if it is outside of the pentagon, it means I have performed above average.

But anyways, It's really cool and a fun way to pass the time, and pretty much everyone will end up with a differently shaped Pentagon-Graph. It really shows how everyone is almost certainly unique.

Haven't seen much about this around the GMC. So I thought I'd show some of my favourite youtubers. They all have channels that regularly have new content, sometimes entertaining, sometimes educational, sometimes both! I really love it all. Makes my empty days a lot less boring. You can post youtubers you've found and like too.

One of my favourites is definitely, VSauce, a youtube channel containing a number diffirent sort of youtube series. He has some playlists called "leanback" where you lean back and enjoy the content, often learning new things about a particular subject. He also has something called DONGS, Do Online Now GuyS, A video series of him highlighting a number of websites and programs downloadable from the internet that are generally very entertaining. A lot more. Generally, you'll find that he makes videos about and talks of uncommon and surprising subjects.

Then, Veritasium, another youtube channel generally related to various things about physics. Most often he interviews people and reveals common physics misconceptions.

The list goes on. Since I don't want to spend all night making breif descriptions of all of youtube's educational videos, I'll list all that I can remember (some of which are related) Minutephysics(short videos explaining physics things), nottinghamscience(assorted science things), numberphile(youtube channel about math and numbers), foodskey(about .. food), sixtysymbols(more physics, majority is astronomical related things), crashcourse(flat-out educational videos explaining a lot of things that are taught in schools of a variety of subjects), scishow(sort of youtube show about various science related things), khanacademy, PBSidea channel, spacerip(discovery-channel quality series about space things), thebenheckshow, vlogbrothers, smarter every day.

It's a pretty long list. But it's pretty awesome. Now, hopefully, You'll never be bored again.

Anyways, I'll list a few of my favourite videos by some of the people I listed to give a sort of sample of what sort of content you can find.

VSauce:


(i can only embed one video, sorry)
Smarter Every Day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz5lGkDdk78

Nottinghamscience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZpwjXadbE

Enjoy. I hope this thread has helped me spread the awesomeness of all this awesome content. Of course, there's more, and make sure to post it if you happen to know of any more that I haven't seen.