To pay with my credit card online I just need to fill in the card details (which are often stored on the website anyway, or auto-filled by my browser). To pay with card in person, I just need to touch in my phone (at worst take out my card and enter the PIN if they don't accept contactless, which is exceptionally rare in the UK).
To pay with a cryptocurrency I need to:
1. Be using a service which accepts crypto. This immediately rules out the overwhelming majority of services people use, live or online.
2. Own the same cryptocurrency which the service accepts.
3. To have it, I need to register to a cryptocurrency exchange.
4. To do that I need to go through identity checks and often message support a couple of times for one thing or another.
5. Now I can use a payment method to deposit money from my bank account to the exchange. NOTE: This step alone is slower than the entire process of just paying real money with my credit card.
6. I need to wait a couple of days for the bank transfer to the exchange to clear. The transfer also comes with fees.
7. While I'm doing this the price of the cryptocurrency is fluctuating and I have no way to know which way it will go next and by how much.
8. Now I need to transfer the cryptocurrency from the exchange to my wallet - this process is different for each coin and each exchange.
9. A few minutes later, if I've followed the instructions correctly I may have the privilege to pay with a cryptocurrency from my wallet. I will pay a fee for this and the payment won't be received immediately.
And I'm capable of doing all of this because I'm a somewhat technical person who's used to following instructions written by other people and has a basic understanding of cryptocurrency. Neither the older members of my family, nor the younger ones who don't spend their entire day in front a computer will have the ability or interest to go through this.
This one is really the only valid reason, otherwise you're not comparing apples-to-apples.
You (most probably) did have to go (physically) to a bank and prove your identity and your credit record in order to maintain any credit card. And it takes days to wire money to your bank account. If anything crypto exchanges are trivially easy to use in comparison and you can convert one (usable) cryptocoin to another much faster and easier than any bank will allow you.
Price fluctuations are a problem, but not if you keep your main balance in a stablecoin and only convert at the time of purchase. And a crypto wallet doesnt grow in physical no matter how many different coins you store in it.
In reality, if cryptocurrencies weren't actively being fought by governments and banks, they would have conquered the world in no time because they are so damn easier to use and secure.
> You (most probably) did have to go (physically) to a bank and prove your identity and your credit record in order to maintain any credit card.
Didn't have to go there physically. And this is done once while with crypto exchanges you need to sign up for multiple ones because the quality and coins they offer vary so much.
> And it takes days to wire money to your bank account.
In the UK I can transfer money through my phone app (or online banking if I prefer) to any other UK bank account and the transfer is instant and completely free. Cryptocurrencies can't compete with banks that have their shit together when it comes to convenience.
a popular exchange like binance offers hundreds of coins and certainly all of the major ones, and probably more than any bank can offer. If you need one that is not in their list then you must be looking at a very weird merchant. i agree that crypto wallets are still cumbersome to use for average users, but finding and signing up to exchanges is easy.
> I can transfer money through my phone app (or online banking if I prefer) to any other UK bank account
does it work equally fast and cheap when you send money to japan or australia?
> does it work equally fast and cheap when you send money to japan or australia?
Of course not. Not that I've ever had to do that in my entire adult life.
> a popular exchange like binance offers hundreds of coins and certainly all of the major ones, and probably more than any bank can offer. If you need one that is not in their list then you must be looking at a very weird merchant.
Which field are you looking at? On the topics that I've been interested in - programming, math, statistics, ML - there many really good books that are completely free.
I find it's a mixed bag -- sometimes DDG is better, sometimes Google is. It kind of reminds me of the old days pre-Google-dominance when you'd try Alta Vista and then Lycos or Excite if you didn't get what you were looking for.
Cynically, I wonder if Google has gotten to the point where they realize that serving the absolute most relevant results means they sell less ads. Of course, I don't think anyone is ordered not to make search quality better, just that incentives/resources get reallocated to things other than ten-blue-link quality.
I agree entirely with how you described the search experience. I would often try three or four ways to get a website I wanted back in the day. I am finding myself learning what search engines I like more for specific types of searches. Some times that means google, some times DDG, and who knows throw Bing int here.
I agree that the DDG results, especially for software development related searches, are often worse than searching Google or StackOverflow directly. So here's my workflow:
1. Search DDG. If I find a decent result, I stop here.
2. Append !so to the end of the search. This searches StackOverflow directly. If this works, I stop here.
3. Append !g to the end of the search. This searches Google directly.
This way Google becomes a last resort.
Also worth noting that you can actually navigate DDG search results using vim keybindings without the need for a plugin: something Google dropped support for a few years ago.
Imagine that they aren't suing simply because they lost.
Imagine that there was actual evidence for corruption, and Amazon lost a $10-billion contract because Trump put his finger on the scale. How would the whole story look different from our perspective and on what basis did you decide that it's one and not the other?
Either company could have won the project - this isn't about their merit. It's about whether the decision was personally influenced by Trump because he hates Bezos.
Trump attacked Amazon because of business; he seems to think Amazon is profiting from the US taxpayers' money.
Now Amazon has a strong financial incentive to go to court in this case as winning can lead to potentially securing a 10b$ contract. Whereas losing costs maybe some millions?
Both Bezos and Trump are very pragmatic business men. I think this is all just about money.
If you really thing Trump dislikes Bezos because of "profiting from the US taxpayer" instead of "owning The Washington Post", I don't even know what to say.
So you mean zero, right? There's no evidence benchmark for a party taking legal action in a civil matter. Saying "you'll be hearing from my lawyer" doesn't strengthen an argument.
>So you mean zero, right? There's no evidence benchmark for a party taking legal action in a civil matter. Saying "you'll be hearing from my lawyer" doesn't strengthen an argument.
In the United States and other common-law legal systems (I don't know about other codes at all) there is the concept of "summary judgement", which would absolutely be invoked if Amazon presented no "no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law" [1]. A summary judgement can be sought with full evidentiary presentation. Amazon's evidence may well be weak, but if they presented "zero evidence" the case wouldn't go to trial at all. It's perfectly reasonable to expect and assume a certain basic level of competence from an established megacorp's legal team. They will have filed a cause of action to which they could at least potentially be entitled relief and assertions of material facts that a jury could at least potentially be convinced by.
No, it isn't. Legally it might be zero, but multi-billion dollar companies don't enter legal processes that last years and cost them millions just for the sake of it. This isn't the same as "you'll hear from my lawyer".
>This isn't the same as "you'll hear from my lawyer".
How isn't it? You keep speaking authoritatively on this; where is your evidence? And any derivation of "Amazon is a big company and they don't enter lawsuits they won't win" isn't evidence.
> "Amazon is a big company and they don't enter lawsuits they won't win"
this simply isn't what I said.
Second - my evidence? We're not in court and I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I just explained my thought process - if you disagree or if you think there's a flaw in my reasoning, you can point it out. Or you can move on and ignore what I've written.
I tend to have discussions with people online to understand their point of view. Will you indulge me and share why you think there's merit to the case or is this thread just another pair of soapboxes where we each squawk from our megaphones and leave without mutual understanding?
1. Anyone who has rightfully-obtained access or knowledge of any such evidence is most likely obligated (legally or otherwise) to keep it secret.
Given #1, asking for evidence isn't the most salient question. Since it can really only be speculation, the most interesting questions probably start with "Given what we know, what is most likely?"
To pay with a cryptocurrency I need to:
1. Be using a service which accepts crypto. This immediately rules out the overwhelming majority of services people use, live or online.
2. Own the same cryptocurrency which the service accepts.
3. To have it, I need to register to a cryptocurrency exchange.
4. To do that I need to go through identity checks and often message support a couple of times for one thing or another.
5. Now I can use a payment method to deposit money from my bank account to the exchange. NOTE: This step alone is slower than the entire process of just paying real money with my credit card.
6. I need to wait a couple of days for the bank transfer to the exchange to clear. The transfer also comes with fees.
7. While I'm doing this the price of the cryptocurrency is fluctuating and I have no way to know which way it will go next and by how much.
8. Now I need to transfer the cryptocurrency from the exchange to my wallet - this process is different for each coin and each exchange.
9. A few minutes later, if I've followed the instructions correctly I may have the privilege to pay with a cryptocurrency from my wallet. I will pay a fee for this and the payment won't be received immediately.
And I'm capable of doing all of this because I'm a somewhat technical person who's used to following instructions written by other people and has a basic understanding of cryptocurrency. Neither the older members of my family, nor the younger ones who don't spend their entire day in front a computer will have the ability or interest to go through this.