Beyond Bitcoin: Why Counterparty Has Won Support From Overstock's Chairman

Posted on by

The combined excitement over the currency and the Blockchain has kept the market capitalization above $4 billion for more than a year. This has attracted both imitators and innovators.

Bill Gates called Bitcoin a "technological tour de force." Enthusiasts believe it will become a more viable form of money and may even replace fiat currencies like the US dollar. Detractors point out that many bitcoin exchanges like Mt. Gox have been hacked, and bitcoin can be stolen from computer-based wallets if its proprietors are not careful. To be fair, one must point out that many sensationalist news articles have mistaken these third-party exchange problems for flaws with bitcoin. As bitcoiners correctly assert, bitcoin is quasi-impossible to counterfeit, and despite a descent in the price of bitcoin from its 2013 peak of around $1,200 to a current price in the $300s, it is still up tremendously from just pennies at its inception in 2009. Beyond its exchange rate, the ease with which one can transfer bitcoin from peer to peer with no intermediary and its deflationary, limited supply have been cited as revolutionary catalysts for more decentralized global finance.

But perhaps the revolution is already upon us. The bitcoin Blockchain is the distributed protocol used to create and transfer the currency, and its exponential growth in users and transactions has some very important implications. In simple terms, the Blockchain uses the computing power of thousands of specialized computers to solve very difficult mathematical equations that make the bitcoin network more secure. Because this network is "distributed" and does not rely on a single central database, it is much more robust than transfer means currently used by most financial institutions.

Imagine a set of irreversible, super-sticky dominoes where it is immediately apparent if someone attempts to cheat. You can&'t take the faulty domino off the table, so you just go back to the last legitimate domino and use it to continue the game in a different direction while banning the cheating player. The only way you can attack the Blockchain is through transparent, domino-like means that leave the culprits exposed to relatively straightforward corrections known as forks. In short, no one can fool mathematics.

The combined excitement over the currency and the Blockchain has kept the market capitalization above $4 billion for more than a year. This has attracted both imitators and innovators. Various developers are making attempts at Blockchains similar to bitcoin, each with its own digital currency.

The Next NXT team has assembled an interesting Blockchain that is much quicker than bitcoin for confirming transactions but lacks bitcoin's security by several orders of magnitude. Bitshares has interesting functions, but its creators make outlandish claims about potential financial performance that don't bode well, given the regulatory scrutiny that the sector is certain to attract.

The Ethereum development team includes Vitalik Buterin, who is very well respected in the cryptographic world, and is proposing some fascinating technological advances, but the end product is way behind schedule, even though the team raised a tidy sum from investors six months ago.

The Ripple platform has garnered a lot of venture capital funding, and there is talk of alliances with banks. Despite its financial resources, however, it lacks legitimacy among many bitcoin faithful, because its native currency was distributed primarily to its creators and continues to be owned by a single corporate entity. This type of ownership structure is antithetical to what most developers who take an interest in digital currencies are trying to build, because it leaves out the component of a distributed stake.

Part of the elegance the bitcoin Blockchain, derived from its distributed design, is that its infrastructure is strong and secure but also flexible. The code is organized so that autonomous developers can build various layers on top of it, incorporating and innovating toward many potential uses.

Counterparty is one platform loyal to bitcoin's protocol. The developers appear to be in tune with bitcoin's purpose, and their stated goal is to provide "reliable functionality" for the current bitcoin Blockchain versus creating an alternative model. Counterparty's aim is to harness the immense power of the Blockchain for uses like secure, distributed contracts, escrows, asset creation, and gaming. Though the Counterparty platform does have its own currency, XCP, the developers point out that the "address" used to store the currency can also be used to store bitcoin and vice versa. Counterparty's currency was established through an innovative process called "proof of burn," where users of the platform were able to "burn" bitcoins by sending them to a verifiably unspendable Bitcoin address and redeeming XCP in return. This transparency established legitimacy versus other bitcoin offshoots, whose developers treated themselves to opaque amounts of whatever digital asset is used to power their platform. Moreover, Counterparty seems to strike a healthy balance between the organic developer community necessary to build a strong platform and the venture capital investment required to make that platform a reality.

Link:

Beyond Bitcoin: Why Counterparty Has Won Support From Overstock's Chairman

Bitcoin inquiry: PayPal calls for clarity on digital currencies

Posted on by

Bitcoin transactions between individual users shouldn't be regulated but businesses offering services based on Bitcoin and other digital currencies should be regulated in a similar manner to other payment services, PayPal has argued.

In a submission (PDF) to the Senate inquiry examining the regulation of digital currencies, including Bitcoin, in Australia, the company argued that it is "important to draw a distinction between digital currencies, versus the companies that trade or facilitate transactions in digital currencies".

The submission states: "While the currency itself should not be regulated, and transactions by individual users without the assistance of intermediaries should not be regulated, companies that provide a financial service for digital currency transmission, for issuance or sale of digital currency, or for exchange with other currencies such as the Australian Dollar, should be regulated in a manner similar to the existing regulations that apply to other payment services.

"Those regulations, however, should be adapted to recognise the specific details of how different digital currencies work, particularly 'decentralised' digital currencies that are not controlled by a specific issuer."

The company added that regulators should clarify that the use of Blockchain-style technology for non-financial applications shouldn't be regulated in the same fashion as digital currencies and providers of digital currency services.

PayPal argued that as a provider of a digital wallet that accepts multiple types of currency it was already adequately regulated by existing laws and should not be caught up in legislation focussed on digital currencies.

"One of the factors that has discouraged PayPal from adding Bitcoin as an additional type of currency in the PayPal wallet is the lack of clarity related to regulation of digital currencies (as with other jurisdictions PayPal is regulated in Australia and is a significantly different business model to digital currencies)," the submission states.

PayPal is yet to include support for the cryptocurrency in its digital wallet or directly support processing of bitcoin-based transactions on its payments platform.

"At this stage, consumers will not be able to store Bitcoins in their PayPal digital wallets," the submission states.

"The rationale for this is that PayPal wants to ensure that while embracing innovation we remain committed to making payments safer and more reliable for customers all users of PayPal are linked to a specific named PayPal account, with consumer protection for buyers, but identity and consumer protection are not built into Bitcoin today. Therefore, we are proceeding gradually, with some support for merchants in the U.S. who want to accept Bitcoin, while holding off on other aspects."

See the article here:

Bitcoin inquiry: PayPal calls for clarity on digital currencies

Psoriasis Costs Americans Up to $135 Billion Annually, Study Finds

Posted on by

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 7, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Psoriasis is more than just a troublesome skin condition for millions of Americans -- it also causes up to $135 billion a year in direct and indirect costs, a new study shows.

According to data included in the study, about 3.2 percent of the U.S. population has the chronic inflammatory skin condition.

"Psoriasis patients may endure skin and joint disease, as well as associated conditions such as heart disease and depression," said Dr. Amit Garg, a dermatologist at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Manhasset, N.Y.

"These patients may bear significant long-term costs related to the medical condition itself, loss of work productivity, as well as to intangibles such as restriction in activities and poor self-image, for example," he added.

In the new study, a team led by Dr. Elizabeth Brezinski of the University of California, Davis reviewed 22 studies to estimate the total annual cost of psoriasis to Americans.

They calculated health care and other costs associated with the skin condition at between $112 billion and $135 billion in 2013.

Direct costs of psoriasis ranged from $57 billion to more than $63 billion, and indirect costs -- such as missed work days -- ranged from about $24 billion to $35 billion, the study found.

Other health problems related to psoriasis cost more than $36 billion, and treating the physical and mental health effects of psoriasis cost up to $11,498 per patient, the research team calculated.

"The direct health care costs are significantly greater for patients with psoriasis than for the general population and are also higher for patients with increasing psoriasis disease severity," the researchers concluded.

Dr. Gary Goldenberg, assistant professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said the findings were "not surprising."

Read the original post:

Psoriasis Costs Americans Up to $135 Billion Annually, Study Finds

Psoriasis costs Americans up to $135 billion annually

Posted on by

(HealthDay News) -- Psoriasis is more than just a troublesome skin condition for millions of Americans -- it also causes up to $135 billion a year in direct and indirect costs, a new study shows.

According to data included in the study, about 3.2 percent of the U.S. population has the chronic inflammatory skin condition.

"Psoriasis patients may endure skin and joint disease, as well as associated conditions such as heart disease and depression," said Dr. Amit Garg, a dermatologist at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Manhasset, N.Y.

"These patients may bear significant long-term costs related to the medical condition itself, loss of work productivity, as well as to intangibles such as restriction in activities and poor self-image, for example," he added.

In the new study, a team led by Dr. Elizabeth Brezinski of the University of California, Davis reviewed 22 studies to estimate the total annual cost of psoriasis to Americans.

They calculated health care and other costs associated with the skin condition at between $112 billion and $135 billion in 2013.

Direct costs of psoriasis ranged from $57 billion to more than $63 billion, and indirect costs -- such as missed work days -- ranged from about $24 billion to $35 billion, the study found.

Other health problems related to psoriasis cost more than $36 billion, and treating the physical and mental health effects of psoriasis cost up to $11,498 per patient, the research team calculated.

"The direct health care costs are significantly greater for patients with psoriasis than for the general population and are also higher for patients with increasing psoriasis disease severity," the researchers concluded.

Dr. Gary Goldenberg, assistant professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said the findings were "not surprising."

Go here to see the original:

Psoriasis costs Americans up to $135 billion annually

How The Skin Disease Psoriasis Costs Us Billions

Posted on by

A patch of psoriasis on an elbow. iStockphoto hide caption

A patch of psoriasis on an elbow.

Skin disorders rarely make it on the list of big-time diseases, so when we saw a study saying that psoriasis costs the nation $52 to $63 billion a year, it was hard not to think, "Really?"

And that's just for the direct costs of health care for people with psoriasis, according to the study, published Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology.

Indirect costs such as lost work hours and unemployment make up another $24 to $35 billion, the study found. Then there are the costs of associated health problems like heart disease and depression, at $35 billion. That's a lot of money for something that could easily be dismissed as a rash by those of us who aren't up to speed on psoriasis. But as those numbers suggest, we'd be wrong.

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that affects about 3 percent of the population; its most obvious manifestation is thick red or scaly skin patches, caused by skin cells dividing too fast. About 10 to 20 percent of people also get an inflammatory type of arthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's a chronic disease, and there's no medication that cures it. Treatments range from over-the-counter skin moisturizers to try to tame the cracking and scaling to ultraviolet light therapy, traditional systemic drugs like methotrexate, and newer biologic drugs that target parts of the immune system.

Bottom line: There are millions of people dealing with a chronic illness that can be disfiguring and disabling. To find out it's like to deal with psoriasis, we called Todd Bello, a 51-year-old from Stony Brook, N.Y. When he was diagnosed with psoriasis at age 28, he started going to the doctor several times a week and trying different treatments.

Bello worked as a letter carrier for the Postal Service, coached his children's soccer games and volunteered as a firefighter and EMT. The psoriasis made his skin crack and bleed when he got in and out of the postal truck. His feet swelled to the point that he couldn't wear shoes. Eventually had to retire on disability. "It's very frustrating for a person who needs to make a living," Bello told Shots. "I'm very fortunate and grateful that my wife has a great job and we're able to pay for the medication I need."

Bello volunteered for several clinical trials for experimental psoriasis drugs. One failed to help. Another, Raptiva, worked wonderfully, Bello says, but was taken off the market because it increased the risk of deadly brain infections. "I wasn't very happy at that point," he says.

He tried Enbrel, another biologic; didn't work. But a third, Stelara, banished symptoms for five years. "Unfortunately, it was temporary," Bello says.

Here is the original post:

How The Skin Disease Psoriasis Costs Us Billions

WWTC Condemns Paris Attack and Suspends Travel Routes

Posted on by

boston MA (PRWEB) January 08, 2015

WWTC (WeChat World Travel Club) made an announcement today to suspend all member travel routes to Paris and North Korea. The official statement was issued after the terrorist attack in Paris and the Sony hacks by North Korea, which resulted in further U.S. sanctions against North Korea. Ben Klub, Managing Director of WeChat World Travel Club, explained the steps taken are necessary precautions to protect club members safety as all members in the US are China-born American citizens.

WeChat World Travel Club has received requests from U.S. members concerning a lack of safety measures in Paris club homes during travel. In response to the request, club managing director Ben echoed President Obamas comment about the Paris attack: We condemn this cowardly and evil attack. WeChat World Travel Club is built on love and trust among all Christian members who love travel, share the same belief and respect all other religions. All members are of Chinese ethnicity. WeChat World Travel Club will make every effort to verify the true identity of new members and host families to ensure travelers' absolute safety. We will resume routes to Paris and N. Korea when the situation changes.

WeChat World Travel Club is a non-profit organization registered in June 2014 in Delaware USA. The organization uses WeChat App (an app owned by the Chinese Internet Company Tencent that is similar to WhatsApp on the iPhone or AndroidOS) as its main distribution and communication tool.. The club has grown its popularity among Chinese travelers since its inception. The club now hosts homes in places from top U.S. tourist cities to Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia including Taiwan and Hong Kong.

WeChat World Travel Clubs slogan is Travel around the world with WeChat. Its model allows members to travel around the world under a budget and also encourages hosting members to make money by becoming an independent travel agency in their residing city under its umbrella. It has offered extremely attractive travel deals, including 4 days/3 nights in Boston for 4 people for less than 400 dollars. WeChat World Travel Club has over 300 paid premium members to date.

More:

WWTC Condemns Paris Attack and Suspends Travel Routes

Page and Perspective: How You Can Travel The World On $50 A Day

Posted on by

Have book, will travel affordably. That's the promise of Matt Kepnes's new travel guide, How To Travel The World On $50 A Day: Travel Cheaper, Longer, Smarter (Perigee Trade, $15). He will tell you how it's done at Kramerbooks on Tuesday, January 13th at 6:30 p.m.

Kepnes is the vagabond behind Nomadic Matt, a blog based on helping people travel and the idea that it's possible to do so without much money. The belief that it isn't can be attributed to the travel industry, Kepnes says. He tells DCist, "Most people look at the ads they see online and in print and think, 'that's lovely but I can't afford that.' However, there are so many websites, apps, and companies out there that can help you find deals, that now is one of the best times to travel."

Kepnes wants to help readers navigate the options, and prove that "travel can be done cheaply without sacrificing comfort." He traveled overseas for the first time in 2004 and has been to over 70 countries since then. He shares many of the tricks he's picked up on his blog, but he wrote the book to "take what is in the blog and expand it" in more detail, with new tips, resources, and destination sections.

How To Travel The World On $50 A Day is divided into three extremely practical step-by-step sections for the apprehensive (or experienced) traveler. "Anyone can do it", Kepnes says, and "the book lays out the planning of a trip from start to finish in an easy-to-follow format."

"Planning Your Trip", "On-The-Road Expenses", and "Breaking It Down By Region" offer both logistical advice and insider "hacks", such as booking a cheap flight (hint: get a credit card that offers bonus flyer miles), the best travel backpacks, the best deal websites, and how to save money at every turn, all over the world.

If you're really looking to get the most bang for your buck, visit Southeast Asia, Kepnes tells DCist: "It's the most affordable region in the world. There's cheap food, accommodation, transportation, and lots of other travelers." Central America is also a great place to save more and travel longer.

And what essentials to pack as a budgeting traveler? "I always bring extra socks because they seem to disappear, a backup bank and credit card in case something goes wrong so you'll always have access to your money, and a good lock to keep your stuff locked up during the day or on overnight buses," Kepnes advises.

Kepnes's other books include How to Teach English Overseas, The Ultimate Guide To Travel Hacking, How To Build A Travel Blog, and How To Make Money With Your Travel Blog. He has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, Lifehacker, BBC, Time, and many other publications. When he isn't traveling, he lives in New York City.

At the Kramerbooks on Tuesday, Kepnes will speak about budget travel and how it has changed over the years, then take questions from the audience and sign books. The event is free to the public.

Visit link:

Page and Perspective: How You Can Travel The World On $50 A Day

II – Leuren Moret: Jesuit Depopulation Plan=Radiation+GMOs+Vaccines+GeoEng+$Collapse+Transhuman – Video

Posted on by


II - Leuren Moret: Jesuit Depopulation Plan=Radiation+GMOs+Vaccines+GeoEng+$Collapse+Transhuman
NOTE: You can access background information and links while you watch this interview here: VIDEO - PART II Leuren Moret: Jesuit Depopulation Plan=Radiation + GMOs + Vaccines + ...

By: Alfred Lambremont Webre

Originally posted here:

II - Leuren Moret: Jesuit Depopulation Plan=Radiation+GMOs+Vaccines+GeoEng+$Collapse+Transhuman - Video

Self-taught computer program finds super poker strategy

Posted on by

Michael Bowling (left) and his colleagues in the Computer Poker Research Group at UAlberta have solved heads-up limit Texas hold 'em poker. John Ulan/University of Alberta

A computer program that taught itself to play poker has created nearly the best possible strategy for one version of the game, showing the value of techniques that may prove useful to help decision-making in medicine and other areas.

The program considered 24 trillion simulated poker hands per second for two months, probably playing more poker than all humanity has ever experienced, says Michael Bowling, who led the project.

The resulting strategy still won't win every game because of bad luck in the cards. But over the long run - thousands of games - it won't lose money. "We can go against the best (players) in the world and the humans are going to be the ones that lose money," said Bowling, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The strategy applies specifically to a game called heads-up limit Texas Hold 'em.

While scientists have created poker-playing programs for years, Bowling's result stands out because it comes so close to "solving" its version of the game, which essentially means creating the optimal strategy.

Poker is hard to solve because it involves imperfect information, where a player doesn't know everything that has happened in the game he is playing - specifically, what cards the opponent has been dealt.

Many real-world challenges like negotiations and auctions also include imperfect information, which is one reason why poker has long been a proving ground for the mathematical approach to decision-making called game theory.

Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who didn't participate in the new work, called Bowling's results a landmark. He said it's the first time that an imperfect-information game that is competitively played by people has been essentially solved.

Bowling's paper, released Thursday by the journal Science, introduces some techniques that could become useful for applying game theory in real-world situations. Bowling is investigating the possibility of helping doctors determine proper insulin doses for diabetic patients, for example.

See the original post:

Self-taught computer program finds super poker strategy

Self-taught computer program finds super strategy for poker

Posted on by

NEW YORK -- A computer program that taught itself to play poker has created nearly the best possible strategy for one version of the game, showing the value of techniques that may prove useful to help decision-making in medicine and other areas.

The program considered 24 trillion simulated poker hands per second for two months, probably playing more poker than all humanity has ever experienced, says Michael Bowling, who led the project.

The resulting strategy still won't win every game because of bad luck in the cards. But over the long run -- thousands of games -- it won't lose money. "We can go against the best (players) in the world and the humans are going to be the ones that lose money," said Bowling, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The strategy applies specifically to a game called heads-up limit Texas Hold 'em.

While scientists have created poker-playing programs for years, Bowling's result stands out because it comes so close to "solving" its version of the game, which essentially means creating the optimal strategy.

Poker is hard to solve because it involves imperfect information, where a player doesn't know everything that has happened in the game he is playing -- specifically, what cards the opponent has been dealt.

Many real-world challenges like negotiations and auctions also include imperfect information, which is one reason why poker has long been a proving ground for the mathematical approach to decision-making called game theory.

Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who didn't participate in the new work, called Bowling's results a landmark. He said it's the first time that an imperfect-information game that is competitively played by people has been essentially solved.

Bowling's paper, released Thursday by the journal Science, introduces some techniques that could become useful for applying game theory in real-world situations. Bowling is investigating the possibility of helping doctors determine proper insulin doses for diabetic patients, for example.

Game theory has also been used to schedule security patrols, and it has implications for other areas such as developing strategies for cybersecurity, designing drugs and fighting disease pandemics.

Continue reading here:

Self-taught computer program finds super strategy for poker

Otago collaborates in breakthrough for quantum hard drive

Posted on by

A team of Australian and New Zealand physicists have extended the storage time for a prototype quantum super-computer optical hard drive by over one hundred times.

Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Otago have achieved a major breakthrough, reported in Nature this week, demonstrating six-hour quantum storage using atoms of the rare earth element europium embedded in a crystal.

It has long been hoped that scientists will eventually come up with a way to store data in a state of quantum entanglement for the benefit of ultra-secure communications.

However, at present, such states can only be maintained for a short time before the entanglement fails. The Australian and New Zealand research team has come up with a way to store data for hours, rather than milliseconds. This new breakthrough heralds the worlds first solid state quantum hard drive.

"Quantum states are very fragile and normally collapse in milliseconds. The fact that we have storage times of hours has the potential to revolutionise how we distribute quantum entanglement in a communication network," says lead author Ms Manjin Zhong, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering at the ANU.

Utilising this effect, a quantum communication network could be used for perfectly secure encryption for data transmission.

"Our experiment shows that it is now possible to think of extending the range of quantum communication by storing entangled light in separate memories and then transporting them to different parts of the network," Ms Zhong said.

The team essentially created the ROM by embedding an atom of the rare-earth element of europium into a crystal matrix.

After writing a quantum state onto the nuclear spin of the europium using light, the team subjected the crystal to a combination of a fixed and oscillating magnetic fields to lock the atoms spin in place and preserve the fragile quantum information.

"This prevented the quantum information leaking away for as long as six hours, which is quite surprising," says Dr Jevon Longdell from the Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies at the University of Otago.

Read more:

Otago collaborates in breakthrough for quantum hard drive

CSU research on horse injuries, stem-cell recovery, may help humans

Posted on by

Stem-cell research by Colorado State University staffers using bone marrow from horses to heal joint injuries on the same animal is making strides, and researchers have great hope that the project will lead to human medical applications.

A team with CSU's Equine Orthopaedic Research Center reports that adding stem-cell therapy to traditional arthroscopic surgery on horses has significantly increased success rates.

Horses that had follow-up, stem-cell treatment were twice as likely to return to normal activity as those that did not, said David Frisbie, an associate professor of equine surgery with CSU and part of the research team.

"We've doubled it, conservatively," in treating cartilage damage in the knee, Frisbie said.

The team had results of its work published last year in the journal Veterinary Surgery.

Some lesions in the meniscus of horses that could not be treated by surgery have been successfully mended using stem cells alone.

"Western performance horses, reining and cutting horses, and barrel horses are very prone to meniscal injuries," Frisbie said.

Beyond meniscus damage, researchers also have focused on tendon lesions in the lower leg, which typically strike race horses.

Horses that suffered a tendon lesion had about a 66 percent chance of reinjury after surgery. Add stem-cell treatment and the reinjury rate drops to 21 percent, Frisbie said.

"It beats the old standards of therapies," which included cortisone and use of other steroids, Frisbie said.

Read more:

CSU research on horse injuries, stem-cell recovery, may help humans

Tamil- As per spirituality, do we have to forgive the Sinners like Pakistan? – Video

Posted on by


Tamil- As per spirituality, do we have to forgive the Sinners like Pakistan?
Plz watch the videos for detail. Our beloved Sri Prasanna guruji is explaining his experiences in an ordinary language,so as to understand clearly, in their ...

By: Sri Sri Prasanna Guruji

Original post:

Tamil- As per spirituality, do we have to forgive the Sinners like Pakistan? - Video