text:
Blog Listing
- @Number71
- Beauty In Ruins
- Best Fantasy Books HQ
- Bitten By Books
- Booknest
- Bookworm Blues
- Charlotte's Library
- Civilian Reader
- Critical Mass
- Curated Fantasy Books
- Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews
- Everything is Nice
- Falcata Times
- Fantasy & SciFi Lovin' News & Reviews
- Fantasy Cafe
- Fantasy Literature
- Gold Not Glittering
- GoodKindles
- Grimdark Magazine
- Hellnotes
- io9
- Jabberwock
- Jeff VanderMeer
- King of the Nerds
- Layers of Thought
- Lynn's Book Blog
- Neth Space
- Novel Notions
- Omnivoracious
- Only The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Pat's Fantasy Hotlist
- Pyr-O-Mania
- Realms Of My Mind
- Rob's Blog O' Stuff
- Rockstarlit Bookasylum
- SciFiChick.com
- Smorgasbord Fantasia
- Speculative Book Review
- Stainless Steel Droppings
- Tez Says
- The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.
- The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
- The Bibliosanctum
- The Book Smugglers
- The Fantasy Hive
- The Fantasy Inn
- The Nocturnal Library
- The OF Blog
- The Qwillery
- The Speculative Scotsman
- The Vinciolo Journal
- The Wertzone
- Thoughts Stained With Ink
- Tip the Wink
- Tor.com
- Val's Random Comments
- Voyager Books
- Walker of Worlds
- Whatever
- Whispers & Wonder
Blog Archive
- GUEST BLOG: Hey, You Got Space Travel in My Histor...
- "The Goblin's Puzzle: Being the Adventures of a Bo...
- GIVEAWAY: Win a Copy of Serafina and the Twisted S...
- EXCERPT: Chains Of Command by Marko Kloos
- SPFBO II the first update (by Mihir Wanchoo)
- GUEST BLOG: Ivanova, Accala & The Hero's Journey b...
- Winners of The Indie Day VI Giveaway!!!
- GUEST BLOG: Turning it on Like a Faucet by Victor ...
Monday, July 18, 2016
GUEST BLOG: Hey, You Got Space Travel in My Historical Drama! by David D. Levine (Arabella of Mars Blog Tour)
Fantasy Book Critic is excited to be a part of the Ababella
of Mars blog tour. This fun, fast paced sci-fi fantasy novel has a historical
flare and is filled with fun and excitement. Today, we are pleased to welcome
David D. Levine to our blog to talk about the novel and what it is like to
write a historical drama that just so happens to have a bit of space travel
Summary of Arabella of Mars:
Ever since Newton witnessed a bubble rising from his
bathtub, mankind has sought the stars. When William III of England commissioned
Capt. William Kidd to command the first expedition to Mars in the late 1600s,
they proved that space travel was both possible and profitable.
Now, one century later, a plantation in the flourishing British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby. A tomboy who shares her father's deft hand with complex automatons. Being raised on the Martian frontier by her Martian nanny, Arabella is more a wild child than a proper young lady. Something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England.
Arabella soon finds herself trying to navigate an alien world until a dramatic change in her family's circumstances forces her to defy all conventions in order to return to Mars in order to save both her brother and the plantation. To do this, Arabella must pass as a boy on the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company with a mysterious Indian captain who is intrigued by her knack with automatons. Arabella must weather the naval war between Britain and France, learning how to sail, and a mutinous crew if she hopes to save her brother from certain death.
Now, one century later, a plantation in the flourishing British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby. A tomboy who shares her father's deft hand with complex automatons. Being raised on the Martian frontier by her Martian nanny, Arabella is more a wild child than a proper young lady. Something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England.
Arabella soon finds herself trying to navigate an alien world until a dramatic change in her family's circumstances forces her to defy all conventions in order to return to Mars in order to save both her brother and the plantation. To do this, Arabella must pass as a boy on the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company with a mysterious Indian captain who is intrigued by her knack with automatons. Arabella must weather the naval war between Britain and France, learning how to sail, and a mutinous crew if she hopes to save her brother from certain death.
View the amazing Youtube book trailer for Arabella of Mars
Enter to win the giveaway for a copy of Arabella of Mars here
Enter to win the giveaway for a copy of Arabella of Mars here
Without further ado, we welcome David D. Levine!
Hey, You Got Space Travel In My Historical Drama!
My novel Arabella of Mars is set, as you might guess from the title, largely on Mars. But most of it takes place in 1813. How -- and perhaps more important, why -- did I go about combining space travel and history?
I've been a space nut since I was a little kid. But even though the cool NASA hardware -- thundering rockets, high-tech materials, lots of blinking lights -- was always one of the most exciting things about space, I've also always had a hankering for a simpler time. The idea of a literal Wagon Train to the Stars has always been appealing, and I love stories in which space travel is accomplished with much lower tech. Examples include The Shadow of the Ship by Robert Wilfred Franson, The Ragged Astronauts by Bob Shaw, Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder, and "A Relic of the Empire" by Larry Niven. My own short story "Ukaliq and the Great Hunt" combines rocket plants, like Niven's stage trees, with genetically engineered beings whose artificially created culture -- based on the Inuit -- allows and indeed requires them to voyage into space with a Neolithic tech level.
Arabella of Mars combines my enthusiasm for space, my interest in low-tech space travel, and my love of the seafaring adventure novels of Patrick O'Brian into what I call a "Regency interplanetary airship adventure." The initial idea was simple: it's an alternate universe in which the solar system is full of air and travel to Mars and Venus can be accomplished by sailing ship. Sailing ships imply a historical time period (or equivalent fantasy world), and I quickly settled on the English Regency, which is rich in dramatic possibilities and fabulous outfits. But I didn't want this to be a fantasy, or set in a secondary world; I wanted it to be, as much as possible, hard science fiction... using the science of the Age of Reason. Basically, this would be an alternate history... a novel that's completely historical except for that one teeny-weeny change of filling the sky with air. And that meant plenty of historical research.
One of the things that occupied far too much of my attention during the worldbuilding phase of the project was nomenclature. There were dozens of Martian proper nouns to make up, which required making some decisions about what sounds would be common in the Martian languages. Places on Mars would require names as well; I couldn't use names like Syrtis Major and Chryse Planitia because in real-world history those weren't assigned until much later than the Regency. Instead, I figured the English would name places on Mars after royalty and military heroes and mangled versions of the natives' place names, the same as they did everywhere else. The terms "zero gravity" and "free fall" sounded too much like NASA, and after some reading of period scientific journals I came up with the term "state of free descent," which sounds like something Benjamin Franklin might have said. And the rotary sails at the back of the boat -- sorry, "stern," -- could likewise not be called "propellers," so I coined the name "propulsive sails," or "pulsers" for short (this sounds pretty modern but is actually in keeping with the linguistic conventions of period, as I understand them). Most of the other naval equipment was named, as new stuff usually is in the real world, by applying an existing word to something vaguely similar. For example, the small aerial vessel used to ferry people between ships in midair -- basically an open frame of rattan with a small four-sail pulser and a few sails for steering -- is called a "cutter," even though it is physically nothing like the correspondingly-named seagoing boat.
Another aspect of worldbuilding on which I spent more time than I probably should is the mechanism by which these aerial ships are launched, propelled, directed, and navigated through the airy deeps between planets. I must confess that, even though I am an Analog writer, I did not do the math, and indeed much of what I've described couldn't possibly pencil out. But I did give it enough consideration, applying what I know of real-world physics, that it feels real to most readers... and I hope I've left out enough details that even physics-savvy readers will be able to suspend disbelief.
I also gave quite a bit of thought to the politics and economics of this world. Would Brittania rule the airlanes as it did the waves in the real world, or would France -- which, in our history, invented the balloon first -- dominate? I decided that there were a number of economic and technological factors that favored the English, which was good because it kept my alternate history from being too alternate. And what could justify the great expense of an interplanetary voyage? The history of India and China suggested that it would be based on otherwise-scarce resources. Perhaps Mars produces an exceptionally strong, lightweight wood which facilitates the building of aerial ships? (This, of course, creates a Catch-22, which I resolved in my novelette "The Wreck of the Mars Adventure.")
But mostly I did a lot of research. One thing about the Regency is that, thanks largely to the popularity of Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian, there are plenty of primary sources and good secondary sources online. And the amazing thing about historical research is the truly weird facts you find. For example, when I found out how sailors of the period made sure every member of the crew got a fair share of the food, it was just too strange not to put in. I swear, sometimes the weirdest stuff in the book is not the Martians but the stuff I got from real history.
So the answer to the question of how you combine historical fiction with space travel is the same as any other worldbuilding question: you do your research, you steal as much as you can from the real world -- which is stranger than anything you can make up -- and then you fake the rest, using what you've learned from your research as a basis.
If you do a good enough job, people will buy it -- in both senses of the word.
1 comments:
- Melissa (My World...in words and pages) said...
Okay. This has me rather curious about the book. This is the first I've seen of it, so I'm going to look around more. Thank you!
- July 19, 2016 at 9:46 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Liverpool John Moores University is a public research university in the city of Liverpool, England with more than 24,000 students – 20,410 undergraduate students and 4,270 postgraduate students, making it the largest university in Liverpool by student population – as well as being the twentieth largest in the United Kingdom.
The LJMU is an ambitious and forward-thinking institution that challenges convention and believes passionately in the concept of "One University" – a community working together to achieve common student-centred objectives within a clear strategy. Their vision is to be recognised as a modern civic university delivering solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.
Their values are based on the belief in transformation – the power of education to drive transformation across social, cultural and economic boundaries; innovation in thinking creatively about new ways to do things; excellence – striving for the highest standards; partnership – by working together in partnership to achieve strong and lasting results; leadership – challenging convention and breaking new ground; community – the power of sharing expertise, and of people coming together with a common purpose.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
by Karen Tate
The ebook is available to download on most devices, and you can read it in any browser delivered by Amazon.com
In ever-increasing numbers, women and men are seeking spirituality beyond traditional religious institutions and more and more their new normal includes the deities, ideals and archetypes of the Sacred Feminine. They have a desire to get beyond the patriarchal dogma that often perpetuates sexism, homophobia and the domination of Gaia and all her inhabitants, including the body of Mother Earth. Goddess Calling is designed to give individuals or those desiring to serve their communities a springboard to offer "sermons from the pulpit" with ideas to create a format for a regular gathering or service. Easy to digest and sometimes gently following the seasons of the year and holidays already on most people's calendars, these messages and meditations use Goddess archetypes, ideals and mythology to provide content for education, inspiration and contemplation for anyone seeking to incorporate a feminine face of God within their spirituality, no matter what their faith.
"Tate encourages all women to rediscover their sacred history, to break the shackles that patriarchal culture has imposed on them, and to take action for the preservation of our Mother Earth. Meditations are profoundly engaging."-- Barbara G. Walker
"A strong, courageous book that will either set your teeth on edge or make you laugh with joy."-- Jean Houston, PhD - World-renowned American scholar, author and philosopher active in the "human potential movement' and advisor to UNICEF and the United Nations
"Political perspectives to challenge oppression. Ecofeminist Thealogy to empower action. Goddess Meditations to feed the Soul."-- Rev. Selena Fox, psychotherapist, environmentalist, Pagan rights activist
"A magnificent work, carefully researched, beautifully organized, using inspiring language. Karen Tate is in love with life, and with the ancient wisdom. A very generous author who is a sister soul in revolution."-- Zsuzsanna Budapest, Women's rights activist, visionary writer and revolutionary priestess
"Tate encourages all women to rediscover their sacred history, to break the shackles that patriarchal culture has imposed on them, and to take action for the preservation of our Mother Earth. Meditations are profoundly engaging."-- Barbara G. Walker, Beloved Foremother and author of The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Feminist Fairy Tales and Man Made God.
Drawing on her eclectic experiences as teacher, interviewer, scholar, traveler, and liturgist, Karen Tate has created in Goddess Calling a powerful synthesis of well-chosen information, reflective observation and poetic prose. This unique volume combines astute analysis of present day social and political realities with soothing meditations, a welcomed addition to the conversation about the female divine. Throughout, goddesses from varied times and locations become accessible and embodied providing an impressive work of thealogy. Goddess Calling is an invaluable resource when crafting meaningful rituals as well as a helpful companion for individual study, inspiration and personal development. -- Elizabeth Fisher - Author of Rise Up and Call Her Name: A Woman-honoring Journey into Earth-based Spiritualities.
Goddess Calling is a valuable resource for those regularly called upon to create services or ceremonies for the exploration of Goddess Spirituality. Karen Tate offers a selection of "Messages" relating the values of Goddess Spirituality - as expressed through the sacred myths of ancient and living Goddess traditions - to today's society, politics, and culture. Then she provides a series of "Meditations" that can help participants awaken those Goddess values in their own lives. Karen brings her deep experience with Goddess Spirituality and the liveliness of her long running internet radio program, Voices of the Sacred Feminine, to this inspirational book." --M. Isidora Forrest - Author of Isis Magic: Cultivating a Relationship with the Goddess of 10,000 Names and Offering to Isis,
Knowing the Goddess Through Her Sacred Symbols Women all over the world are rising up to create their own circles, churches and organizations to empower themselves, to express female Goddess Calling spirituality and to better the world. This amazing book serves us well in offering brilliant wisdom, joyful ideas and gentle structure to our gatherings. We have been waiting for such a book, and I'm so glad it's now here. Rev. Karen Tate is a treasure - one of our most profound thinkers and doers for an ancient spirituality that is coming through just in time for all humanity. Thank you, Karen!
-- Rev. Ava - Founder and Presiding Priestess of the Goddess Temple of Orange County
To feel loved by the Sacred Feminine is a cure we need, and Karen Tate's Goddess Calling helps bring it forth. She offers intellectual food, intuitional inspiration and experiential nourishment to seekers on the path of restoration of the feminine principle for our world. Goddess Calling can be used as a manual to create a wisdom circle or public ritual for a holy-day. She offers words to say for the important yearly cycles of renewal of the deep feminine, as well as guided visualization meditations to take us inward to meet the world goddesses.Reverend Tate honors the archetype of Sacred Union through the story of Mary Magdalene and returns Mary to the company of her sister goddesses where she belongs. Mary Magdalene is but one facet of the world-changing strength of the feminine spirit that comes through in this book of rituals, meditations and political perceptions. -- Joan Norton - The Magdalene Within and 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine; Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene


text:
Here you will find answers to the most commonly asked questions.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a distributed peer-to-peer digital currency that can be transferred instantly and securely between any two people in the world. It's like electronic cash that you can use to pay friends or merchants.
What are bitcoins?
Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin system. A commonly used shorthand for this is "BTC" to refer to a price or amount (e.g. "100 BTC"). There are such things as physical bitcoins, but ultimately, a bitcoin is just a number associated with a Bitcoin Address. A physical bitcoin is simply an object, such as a coin, with the number carefully embedded inside. See also an easy intro to Bitcoin.
How can I get bitcoins?
There are a variety of ways to acquire bitcoins:
- Accept bitcoins as payment for goods or services.
- You can buy bitcoins from Bitit Coinbase, PayBis, Cubits, CoinCorner, BIPS Market, Circle, or Celery.
- The most common way to buy bitcoins are the Bitcoin Exchanges.
- There are several services where you can trade them for traditional currency. There are price comparison websites where you can compare prices at various exchanges, brokers, and dealers, for example, ExchangeRates.Pro
- You can also buy bitcoins using Bitcoin ATMs that are locally in your area.
- Find someone to trade cash for bitcoins in-person through a local directory.
- Participate in a mining pool.
- If you have a lot of mining hardware, you can solo mine and attempt to create a new block (currently yields 12.5 bitcoins plus transaction fees).
- Visit sites that provide free samples and offers.
Does Bitcoin guarantee an influx of free money?
Since Bitcoin is a new technology, what it is and how it works may be initially unclear. Bitcoin is sometimes presented as being one of three things:
- Some sort of online 'get-rich-quick' scam.
- A loophole in the market economy, the installation of which guarantees a steady influx of cash.
- A sure investment that will almost certainly yield a profit.
In fact, none of the above are true. Let's look at them independently.
- Is Bitcoin a 'get-rich-quick' scheme?
- If you've spent much time on the Internet, you've probably seen ads for many 'get-rich-quick' schemes. These ads usually promise huge profits for a small amounts of easy work. Such schemes are usually pyramid/matrix-style schemes that make money from their own employees and offer nothing of any real value. Most convince one to buy packages that will make them earn hundreds a day, which in fact have the buyer distribute more such ads, and make minute profits.
- Bitcoin is in no way similar to these schemes. Bitcoin doesn't promise windfall profits. There is no way for the developers to make money from your involvement or to take money from you. That bitcoins are nearly impossible to acquire without the owner's consent represents one of its greatest strengths. Bitcoin is an experimental, virtual currency that may succeed or may fail. None of its developers expect to get rich off of it.
- A more detailed answer to this question can be found here.
- Will I make money by installing the client?
- Most people who use Bitcoin don't earn anything by doing so, and the default client has no built-in way to earn Bitcoins. A small minority of people with dedicated, high-performance hardware do earn some Bitcoins by "mining" (generating new bitcoins, see What is mining?) with special software, but joining Bitcoin shouldn't be construed as being the road to riches. Most Bitcoin users get involved because they find the project conceptually interesting and don't earn anything by doing so. This is also why you won't find much speculation about the political or economic repercussions of Bitcoin anywhere on this site: Bitcoin developers owe their dedication to the project's intellectual yieldings more than to those of a monetary nature. Bitcoin is still taking its first baby steps; it may go on to do great things but right now it only has something to offer those chasing conceptually interesting projects or bleeding edge technology.
- As an investment, is Bitcoin a sure thing?
- Bitcoin is a new and interesting electronic currency, the value of which is not backed by any single government or organization. Like other currencies, it is worth something partly because people are willing to trade it for goods and services. Its exchange rate fluctuates continuously, and sometimes wildly. It lacks wide acceptance and is vulnerable to manipulation by parties with modest funding. Security incidents such as website and account compromise may trigger major sell-offs. Other fluctuations can build into positive feedback loops and cause much larger exchange rate fluctuations. Anyone who puts money into Bitcoin should understand the risk they are taking and consider it a high-risk currency. Later, as Bitcoin becomes better known and more widely accepted, it may stabilize, but for the time being it is unpredictable. Any investment in Bitcoin should be done carefully and with a clear plan to manage the risk.
Can I buy bitcoins with Paypal?
It is possible to buy physical bitcoins with PayPal but it is otherwise difficult and/or expensive to do so for non-physical bitcoins, because of significant risk to the seller.
While it is possible to find an individual who wishes to sell Bitcoin to you via Paypal, (perhaps via #bitcoin-otc ) most exchanges do not allow funding through PayPal. This is due to repeated cases where someone pays for bitcoins with Paypal, receives their bitcoins, and then fraudulently complains to Paypal that they never received their purchase. PayPal often sides with the fraudulent buyer in this case, which means any seller needs to cover that risk with higher fees or refuse to accept PayPal altogether.
Buying Bitcoins from individuals this way is still possible, but requires the seller to have some trust that the buyer will not file a claim with PayPal to reverse the payment.
In November 2020, PayPal announced that all account holders in the US would be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin through its platform. The news followed its announcement in October 2020 that it would introduce options for cryptocurrency buying and selling, through a partnership with Paxos Crypto Brokerage.
Also PayBis allows you to buy Bitcoins with PayPal. You may find other exchanges and individuals willing to accept Paypal for Bitcoins at ExchangeRates.Pro, price comparison of cryptocurrency exchanges and p2p market.
Where can I find a forum to discuss Bitcoin?
Please visit the Community Portal for links to Bitcoin-related forums.
How are new bitcoins created?
New bitcoins are generated by the network through the process of "mining". In a process that is similar to a continuous raffle draw, mining nodes on the network are awarded bitcoins each time they find the solution to a certain mathematical problem (and thereby create a new block). Creating a block is a proof of work with a difficulty that varies with the overall strength of the network. The reward for solving a block is automatically adjusted so that, ideally, every four years of operation of the Bitcoin network, half the amount of bitcoins created in the prior 4 years are created. A maximum of 10,499,889.80231183 bitcoins were created in the first 4 (approx.) years from January 2009 to November 2012. Every four years thereafter this amount halves, so it should be 5,250,000 over years 4-8, 2,625,000 over years 8-12, and so on. Thus the total number of bitcoins in existence can never exceed 20,999,839.77085749 and counting. See Controlled Currency Supply.
Blocks are mined every 10 minutes, on average and for the first four years (210,000 blocks) each block included 50 new bitcoins. As the amount of processing power directed at mining changes, the difficulty of creating new bitcoins changes. This difficulty factor is calculated every 2016 blocks and is based upon the time taken to generate the previous 2016 blocks. See Mining.
What's the current total number of bitcoins in existence?
Current count. Also see Total bitcoins in circulation chart
The number of blocks times the coin value of a block is the number of coins in existence. The coin value of a block is 50 BTC for each of the first 210,000 blocks, 25 BTC for the next 210,000 blocks, then 12.5 BTC, 6.25 BTC and so on.
How divisible are bitcoins?
A bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimal places. Therefore, 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest amount that can be handled in a transaction. If necessary, the protocol and related software can be modified to handle even smaller amounts.
What do I call the various denominations of bitcoin?
Unlike most currencies, Bitcoin amounts are highly divisible. This has led to a desire to create names for smaller denominations of bitcoin amounts, especially since transactions involving whole bitcoins are no longer quite so common. Bitcoin is decentralized, so there is no organization that can set official names for units. Therefore, there are many different units with varying degrees of popularity. As of 2014, the most common units are bitcoins, bits, and satoshi: 1 bitcoin = 1 000 000.00 bits = 100 000 000 satoshi.
The bitcoin (abbreviated BTC or XBT) is the unit that was used in the original Bitcoin wallet software created by Satoshi Nakamoto. There is nothing particularly special about this unit, but it is by far the most common unit due to tradition.
The smallest value that the Bitcoin network supports sending is the satoshi (sometimes abbreviated sat), one hundred-millionth (0.000 000 01) of a bitcoin. In other words, the network does not support sending fractions of a satoshi. Since it is a hard limit, it seems natural to use it as a unit, though it currently has very little value. The unit was named in honor of Bitcoin's creator after he left -- he was not so vain as to name a unit after himself. The plural of satoshi is satoshi: "Send me 100 satoshi".
Another common unit is the bit, one millionth (0.000 001) of a bitcoin. This unit is the same as a microbitcoin (μBTC). Bits are seen by some as especially logical because they have two-decimal precision like most fiat currencies. You can send 1.23 bits, but not 1.234 bits due to the network's limited precision.
It is also fairly common to use SI prefixes:
- 0.01 BTC = 1 cBTC = 1 centibitcoin (also referred to as bitcent)
- 0.001 BTC = 1 mBTC = 1 millibitcoin (also referred to as mbit (pronounced em-bit) or millibit or even bitmill)
- 0.000 001 BTC = 1 μBTC = 1 microbitcoin (also referred to as ubit (pronounced yu-bit) or microbit)
For an overview of all proposed units of Bitcoin (including less common and niche units), see Units.
Further discussion on this topic can be found on the forums here:
How does the halving work when the number gets really small?
Eventually the reward will go from 0.00000001 BTC to zero and no more bitcoins will be created.
The block reward calculation is done as a right bitwise shift of a 64-bit signed integer, which means it is divided by two and rounded down. The integer is equal to the value in BTC * 100,000,000 since internally in the reference client software, all Bitcoin balances and values are stored as unsigned integers.
With an initial block reward of 50 BTC, it will take many 4-year periods for the block reward to reach zero.
How long will it take to generate all the coins?
The last block that will generate coins will be block #6,929,999 which should be generated at or near the year 2140. The total number of coins in circulation will then remain static at 20,999,999.9769 BTC.
Even if the allowed precision is expanded from the current 8 decimals, the total BTC in circulation will always be slightly below 21 million (assuming everything else stays the same). For example, with 16 decimals of precision, the end total would be 20,999,999.999999999496 BTC.
If no more coins are going to be generated, will more blocks be created?
Absolutely! Even before the creation of coins ends, the use of transaction fees will likely make creating new blocks more valuable from the fees than the new coins being created. When coin generation ends, these fees will sustain the ability to use bitcoins and the Bitcoin network. There is no practical limit on the number of blocks that will be mined in the future.
But if no more coins are generated, what happens when Bitcoins are lost? Won't that be a problem?
Because of the law of supply and demand, when fewer bitcoins are available the ones that are left will be in higher demand, and therefore will have a higher value. So, as Bitcoins are lost, the remaining bitcoins will eventually increase in value to compensate. As the value of a bitcoin increases, the number of bitcoins required to purchase an item decreases. This is a deflationary economic model. As the average transaction size reduces, transactions will probably be denominated in sub-units of a bitcoin such as millibitcoins ("Millies") or microbitcoins ("Mikes").
The Bitcoin protocol uses a base unit of one hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin ("a Satoshi"), but unused bits are available in the protocol fields that could be used to denote even smaller subdivisions.
If every transaction is broadcast via the network, does Bitcoin scale?
The blockchain base layer is not very scalable but layer-2 technologies can be used to greatly increase bitcoin's scale. Lightning Network is one example which uses smart contracts to build a network where payments are routed along a path instead of flooded to every peer. These payments can be nearly as secure and irreversible as blockchain transactions but have much better scalability (as well support instant payments which are much more private). Other possible layer-2 scalability technologies are sidechains or a bitcoin ecash chaumian bank.
See also:
- A trip to the moon requires a rocket with multiple stages
- Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system
- Scalability.
Where does the value of Bitcoin stem from? What backs up Bitcoin?
Bitcoins have value because they are useful and because they are scarce. As they are accepted by more merchants, their value will stabilize. See the list of Bitcoin-accepting sites.
When we say that a currency is backed up by gold, we mean that there's a promise in place that you can exchange the currency for gold. Bitcoins, like dollars and euros, are not backed up by anything except the variety of merchants that accept them.
It's a common misconception that Bitcoins gain their value from the cost of electricity required to generate them. Cost doesn't equal value – hiring 1,000 men to shovel a big hole in the ground may be costly, but not valuable. Also, even though scarcity is a critical requirement for a useful currency, it alone doesn't make anything valuable. For example, your fingerprints are scarce, but that doesn't mean they have any exchange value.
Alternatively it needs to be added that while the law of supply and demand applies it does not guarantee value of Bitcoins in the future. If confidence in Bitcoins is lost then it will not matter that the supply can no longer be increased, the demand will fall off with all holders trying to get rid of their coins. An example of this can be seen in cases of state currencies, in cases when the state in question dissolves and so no new supply of the currency is available (the central authority managing the supply is gone), however the demand for the currency falls sharply because confidence in its purchasing power disappears. Of-course Bitcoins do not have such central authority managing the supply of the coins, but it does not prevent confidence from eroding due to other situations that are not necessarily predictable.
Is Bitcoin a bubble?
Yes, in the same way as the euro and dollar are. They only have value in exchange and have no inherent value. If everyone suddenly stopped accepting your dollars, euros or bitcoins, the "bubble" would burst and their value would drop to zero. But that is unlikely to happen: even in Somalia, where the government collapsed 20 years ago, Somali shillings are still accepted as payment.
Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
In a Ponzi Scheme, the founders persuade investors that they'll profit. Bitcoin does not make such a guarantee. There is no central entity, just individuals building an economy.
A ponzi scheme is a zero sum game. Early adopters can only profit at the expense of late adopters. Bitcoin has possible win-win outcomes. Early adopters profit from the rise in value. Late adopters, and indeed, society as a whole, benefit from the usefulness of a stable, fast, inexpensive, and widely accepted p2p currency.
The fact that early adopters benefit more doesn't alone make anything a Ponzi scheme. All good investments in successful companies have this quality.
Doesn't Bitcoin unfairly benefit early adopters?
Early adopters in Bitcoin are taking a risk and invested resources in an unproven technology. By so doing, they help Bitcoin become what it is now and what it will be in the future (hopefully, a ubiquitous decentralized digital currency). It is only fair they will reap the benefits of their successful investment.
In any case, any bitcoin generated will probably change hands dozens of time as a medium of exchange, so the profit made from the initial distribution will be insignificant compared to the total commerce enabled by Bitcoin. Many of the earliest users of Bitcoin have traded their coins at valuations below $1 US, or other amounts which are small compared to contemporary prices.
Won't loss of wallets and the finite amount of Bitcoins create excessive deflation, destroying Bitcoin?
Worries about Bitcoin being destroyed by deflation are not entirely unfounded. Unlike most currencies, which experience inflation as their founding institutions create more and more units, Bitcoin will likely experience gradual deflation with the passage of time. Bitcoin is unique in that only a small amount of units will ever be produced (twenty-one million to be exact), this number has been known since the project's inception, and the units are created at a predictable rate.
Also, Bitcoin users are faced with a danger that doesn't threaten users of any other currency: if a Bitcoin user loses his wallet, his money is gone forever, unless he finds it again. And not just to him; it's gone completely out of circulation, rendered utterly inaccessible to anyone. As people will lose their wallets, the total number of Bitcoins will slowly decrease.
Therefore, Bitcoin seems to be faced with a unique problem. Whereas most currencies inflate over time, Bitcoin will mostly likely do just the opposite. Time will see the irretrievable loss of an ever-increasing number of Bitcoins. An already small number will be permanently whittled down further and further. And as there become fewer and fewer Bitcoins, the laws of supply and demand suggest that their value will probably continually rise.
Thus Bitcoin is bound to once again stray into mysterious territory, because no one exactly knows what happens to a currency that grows continually more valuable. Many economists claim that a low level of inflation is a good thing for a currency, but nobody is quite sure about what might happens to one that continually deflates. Although deflation could hardly be called a rare phenomenon, steady, constant deflation is unheard of. There may be a lot of speculation, but no one has any hard data to back up their claims.
That being said, there is a mechanism in place to combat the obvious consequences. Extreme deflation would render most currencies highly impractical: if a single Canadian dollar could suddenly buy the holder a car, how would one go about buying bread or candy? Even pennies would fetch more than a person could carry. Bitcoin, however, offers a simple and stylish solution: infinite divisibility. Bitcoins can be divided up and trade into as small of pieces as one wants, so no matter how valuable Bitcoins become, one can trade them in practical quantities.
In fact, infinite divisibility should allow Bitcoins to function in cases of extreme wallet loss. Even if, in the far future, so many people have lost their wallets that only a single Bitcoin, or a fraction of one, remains, Bitcoin should continue to function just fine. No one can claim to be sure what is going to happen, but deflation may prove to present a smaller threat than many expect.
For more information, see the Deflationary spiral page.
What if someone bought up all the existing Bitcoins?
Bitcoin markets are competitive -- meaning the price of a bitcoin will rise or fall depending on supply and demand at certain price levels. Only a fraction of bitcoins issued to date are found on the exchange markets for sale. So even though technically, a buyer with lots of money could buy all the bitcoins offered for sale, unless those holding the rest of the bitcoins offer them for sale as well, even the wealthiest, most determined buyer can't get at them.
Additionally, new currency continues to be issued daily and will continue to do so for decades; though over time the rate at which they are issued declines to insignificant levels. Those who are mining aren't obligated to sell their bitcoins so not all bitcoins will make it to the markets even.
This situation doesn't suggest, however, that the markets aren't vulnerable to price manipulation. It doesn't take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down, and thus Bitcoin remains a volatile asset.
What if someone creates a new block chain, or a new digital currency that renders Bitcoin obsolete?
That the block chain cannot be easily forked represents one of the central security mechanisms of Bitcoin. Given the choice between two block chains, a Bitcoin miner always chooses the longer one - that is to say, the one with the more complex hash. Thusly, it ensures that each user can only spend their bitcoins once, and that no user gets ripped off.
As a consequence of the block chain structure, there may at any time be many different sub-branches, and the possibility always exists of a transaction being over-written by the longest branch, if it has been recorded in a shorter one. The older a transaction is though, the lower its chances of being over-written, and the higher of becoming permanent. Although the block chain prevents one from spending more Bitcoins than one has, it means that transactions can be accidentally nullified.
A new block chain would leave the network vulnerable to double-spend attacks. However, the creation of a viable new chain presents considerable difficulty, and the possibility does not present much of a risk.
Bitcoin will always choose the longer Block Chain and determines the relative length of two branches by the complexities of their hashes. Since the hash of each new block is made from that of the block preceding it, to create a block with a more complex hash, one must be prepared to do more computation than has been done by the entire Bitcoin network from the fork point up to the newest of the blocks one is trying to supersede. Needless to say, such an undertaking would require a very large amount of processing power and since Bitcoin is continually growing and expanding, it will likely only require more with the passage of time.
A much more distinct and real threat to the Bitcoin use is the development of other, superior virtual currencies, which could supplant Bitcoin and render it obsolete and valueless.
A great deal of careful thought and ingenuity has gone into the development of Bitcoin, but it is the first of its breed, a prototype, and vulnerable to more highly-evolved competitors. At present, any threatening rivals have yet to rear their heads; Bitcoin remains the first and foremost private virtual currency, but we can offer no guarantees that it will retain that position. It would certainly be in keeping with internet history for a similar system built from the same principles to supersede and cast Bitcoin into obsolescence, after time had revealed its major shortcomings. Friendster and Myspace suffered similar fates at the hand of Facebook, Napster was ousted by Limeware, Bearshare and torrent applications, and Skype has all but crushed the last few disciples of the Microsoft Messenger army.
This may sound rather foreboding, so bear in mind that the introduction of new and possibly better virtual currencies will not necessarily herald Bitcoin's demise. If Bitcoin establishes itself sufficiently firmly before the inception of the next generation of private, online currencies so as to gain widespread acceptance and general stability, future currencies may pose little threat even if they can claim superior design. This is known as the network effect.
Is Bitcoin open to value manipulation?
The current low market cap of Bitcoin means that any investor with deep enough pockets can significantly change/manipulate the rate. Is this a problem?
This is only a problem if you are investing in Bitcoin for short period of time. A manipulator can't change the fundamentals, and over a period of 5-10 years, the fundamentals will win over any short term manipulations.
Sending and Receiving Payments
Why do I have to wait 10 minutes before I can spend money I received?
10 minutes is the average time taken to find a block. It can be significantly more or less time than that depending on luck; 10 minutes is simply the average case.
Blocks (shown as "confirmations" in the GUI) are how the Bitcoin achieves consensus on who owns what. Once a block is found everyone agrees that you now own those coins, so you can spend them again. Until then it's possible that some network nodes believe otherwise, if somebody is attempting to defraud the system by reversing a transaction. The more confirmations a transaction has, the less risk there is of a reversal. Only 6 blocks or 1 hour is enough to make reversal computationally impractical. This is dramatically better than credit cards which can see chargebacks occur up to three months after the original transaction!
Ten minutes was specifically chosen by Satoshi as a tradeoff between first confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain splits. After a block is mined, it takes time for other miners to find out about it, and until then they are actually competing against the new block instead of adding to it. If someone mines another new block based on the old block chain, the network can only accept one of the two, and all the work that went into the other block gets wasted. For example, if it takes miners 1 minute on average to learn about new blocks, and new blocks come every 10 minutes, then the overall network is wasting about 10% of its work. Lengthening the time between blocks reduces this waste.
As a thought experiment, what if the Bitcoin network grew to include Mars? From the farthest points in their orbits, it takes about 20 minutes for a signal to travel from Earth to Mars. With only 10 minutes between new blocks, miners on Mars would always be 2 blocks behind the miners on Earth. It would be almost impossible for them to contribute to the block chain. If we wanted collaborate with those kinds of delays, we would need at least a few hours between new blocks.
Do you have to wait until my transactions are confirmed in order to buy or sell things with Bitcoin?
YES, you do, IF the transaction is non-recourse. The Bitcoin reference software does not display transactions as confirmed until six blocks have passed (confirmations). As transactions are buried in the chain they become increasingly non-reversible but are very reversible before the first confirmation. Two to six confirmations are recommended for non-recourse situations depending on the value of the transactions involved.
When people ask this question they are usually thinking about applications like supermarkets. This generally is a recourse situation: if somebody tries to double-spend on a face-to-face transaction it might work a few times, but probabalistically speaking eventually one of the double-spends will get noticed, and the penalty for shoplifting charges in most localities is calibrated to be several times worse than the proceeds of a single shoplifting event.
Double-spends might be a concern for something like a snack machine in a low-traffic area with no nearby security cameras. Such a machine shouldn't honor zero-confirmation payments, and should instead use some other mechanism of clearing Bitcoin or validating transactions against reversal, see the wiki article here for alternatives.
Applications that require immediate payment processing, like supermarkets or snack machines, need to manage the risks. Here is one way to reverse an unconfirmed payment:
A Finney attack is where an attacker mines a block containing a movement of some coins back to themselves. Once they find a block solution, they quickly go to a merchant and make a purchase, then broadcast the block, thus taking back the coins. This attack is a risk primarily for goods that are dispatched immediately, like song downloads or currency trades. Because the attacker can't choose the time of the attack, it isn't a risk for merchants such as supermarkets where you can't choose exactly when to pay (due to queues, etc). The attack can fail if somebody else finds a block containing the purchasing transaction before you release your own block, therefore, merchants can reduce but not eliminate the risk by making purchasers wait some length of time that's less than a confirm.
Because pulling off this attack is not trivial, merchants who need to sell things automatically and instantly are most likely to adjust the price to include the cost of reversal fraud, or elect to use special insurance.
I was sent some bitcoins and they haven't arrived yet! Where are they?
Don't panic! There are a number of reasons why your bitcoins might not show up yet, and a number of ways to diagnose them.
The latest version of the Bitcoin-Qt client tells you how far it has yet to go in downloading the blockchain. Hover over the icon in the bottom right corner of the client to learn your client's status.
If it has not caught up then it's possible that your transaction hasn't been included in a block yet.
You can check pending transactions in the network by going here or here and then searching for your address. If the transaction is listed here then it's a matter of waiting until it gets included in a block before it will show in your client.
If the transaction is based on a coin that was in a recent transaction then it could be considered a low priority transaction. Transfers can take longer if the transaction fee paid was not high enough. If there is no fee at all the transfer can get a very low priority and take hours or even days to be included in a block.
I sent too small of a transaction fee, is my bitcoin lost forever?
If the transaction never gets confirmed into a block - the mempool expiry of all nodes will drop it eventually and you will be able to spend your funds again - typically it takes about 3 days or so for this to happen. If using an [SPV] wallet such as Electrum or Multibit, if after three days the wallet does not see the coin to spend, you need to reindex your wallet's block headers. After reindexing, your wallet will see that the coin was never confirmed and thus the balance will be spendable again.
NOTE: From Bitcoin 0.14 "transaction reappearance" happens after 2 weeks.
Why does my Bitcoin address keep changing?
See also: Address reuse
Unlike postal and email addresses, Bitcoin addresses are designed to be used exactly once only, for a single transaction. Originally, wallets would display only a single address at a time, and change it when a transaction was received, but an increasing number of wallet implementations now generate an address when you explicitly want to receive a payment.
While it is technically possible to use an address for an arbitrary number of payments, this works by accident and harms both yourself and other unrelated third parties, so it is considered a bad practice. The most important concerns with such misuse involve loss of privacy and security: both can be put into jeopardy when addresses are used for more than a single transaction only.
How much will the transaction fee be? / Why is the fee so high?
Bitcoin transactions almost always require a transaction fee for them to get confirmed. The transaction fee is received by the first bitcoin miner who mines a block containing the transaction; this action is also what gives the transaction its first confirmation. The appropriate fee varies depending on how large (in bytes) your transaction is, how fast you want the transaction to be confirmed, and also on current network conditions. As such, paying a fixed fee, or even a fixed fee per kB, is a very bad idea; all good Bitcoin wallets will use several pieces of data to estimate an appropriate fee for you, though some are better at fee estimation than others.
The fee most strongly depends on the transaction's data size. Fees do not depend on the BTC amount of the transaction -- it's entirely possible for a 0.01 BTC transaction to require a higher fee than a 1000 BTC transaction.
Basic intro to how Bitcoin transactions work: If you receive BTC in three separate transactions of (say) 1, 5, and 10 BTC, then you can think of your wallet as containing three gold coins with sizes 1, 5, and 10 BTC. If you then want to send 6 BTC, you can melt the 1 & 5 BTC coins together and recast them as a 6 BTC coin, or melt the 10 BTC coin and recast a 6 BTC coin for the recipient and a 4 BTC coin as change for yourself. In Bitcoin's technical vocabulary, these objects are literally called input and output coins. (In the rest of this section, when we say "coin" we mean these objects, not the amount of BTC value.)
Transaction data sizes, and therefore fees, are proportional to the number (not value) of input and output coins in a transaction. Input coins are about 5x larger / more expensive than output coins.
If your wallet estimates a very high fee, it is most likely because your wallet is full of a whole bunch of tiny coins, so your transaction will need to take very many coins as inputs, increasing the cost. On the bright side, fees will go down once you make a few transactions, since you will end up "melting down" these many small coins into a few larger ones. Sometimes you can significantly reduce the fee by sending less BTC: if you have like 1000 tiny faucet payments totaling 0.5 BTC and then 16.5 BTC from other sources, then you'll find that sending ~16.5 BTC will be massively cheaper than sending a slightly higher value since it avoids including all of those faucet coins.
Fees also fluctuate depending on network conditions. All unconfirmed transactions compete with each other to be picked up by miners. If there are a lot of high-fee transactions being sent right now, then you will need to pay higher fees to out-bid them. On the other hand, if speed is less important to you, you can pay a somewhat smaller fee, and your transaction will float around until there is a period of reduced network usage. Sometimes even transactions with zero fee will be confirmed after a very long period of time, though this requires a perfect set of conditions, beyond what is explained here (ie. it probably won't work if you try it).
Oftentimes wallets will have an "express" fee configuration, but note that confirmation times are naturally random and unreliable. At any given point in time, the probability that no transactions will be confirmed in the next hour is about 0.25% (ie. it happens more than once per week on average). Bitcoin users should avoid getting into situations where their transactions absolutely must get 1 confirmation in the next couple of hours, even if high-fee transactions usually take less than 10 minutes to get 1 confirmation.
What happens when someone sends me a bitcoin but my computer is powered off?
Bitcoins are not actually "sent" to your wallet; the software only uses that term so that we can use the currency without having to learn new concepts. Your wallet is only needed when you wish to spend coins that you've received.
If you are sent coins when your wallet client program is not running, and you later launch the wallet client program, the coins will eventually appear as if they were just received in the wallet. That is to say, when the client program is started it must download blocks and catch up with any transactions it did not already know about.
How long does "synchronizing" take when the Bitcoin client is first installed? What's it doing?
The popular Bitcoin client software from bitcoin.org implements a "full" Bitcoin node: It can carry out all the duties of the Bitcoin P2P system, it isn't simply a "client". One of the principles behind the operation of full Bitcoin nodes is that they don't assume that the other participants have followed the rules of the Bitcoin system. During synchronization, the software is processing historical Bitcoin transactions and making sure for itself that all of the rules of the system have been correctly followed.
In normal operation, after synchronizing, the software should use a hardly noticeable amount of your computer's resources.
When the wallet client program is first installed, its initial validation requires a lot of work from your computer's hard disk, so the amount of time to synchronize depends on your disk speed and, to a lesser extent, your CPU speed. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or so. On a slow computer it could take more than 40 hours of continuous synchronization, so check your computer's power-saving settings to ensure that it does not turn its hard disk off when unattended for a few hours. You can use the Bitcoin software during synchronization, but you may not see recent payments to you until the client program has caught up to the point where those transactions happened.
If you feel that this process takes too long, you can try an alternative lightweight node such as Electrum, though these clients have weaker security and privacy. See also: Why should you use a full node wallet
Do I need to configure my firewall to run Bitcoin?
Bitcoin will connect to other nodes, usually on TCP port 8333. You will need to allow outgoing TCP connections to port 8333 if you want to allow your Bitcoin client to connect to many nodes. Testnet uses TCP port 18333 instead of 8333.
If you want to restrict your firewall rules to a few IPs, you can find stable nodes in the fallback nodes list.
How does the peer finding mechanism work?
Bitcoin finds peers primarily by forwarding peer announcements within its own network and each node saves a database of peers that it's aware of, for future use. In order to bootstrap this process Bitcoin needs a list of initial peers, these can be provided manually but normally it obtains them by querying a set of DNS domain names which have automatically updated lists, if that doesn't work it falls back to a built-in list which is updated from time to time in new versions of the software. In the reference software initial peers can also be specified manually by adding an addr.txt to the data directory or via the addnode parameter.
What is mining?
Mining is the process of spending computation power to secure Bitcoin transactions against reversal and introducing new Bitcoins to the system[1].
Technically speaking, mining is the calculation of a hash of the a block header, which includes among other things a reference to the previous block, a hash of a set of transactions and a nonce. If the hash value is found to be less than the current target (which is inversely proportional to the difficulty), a new block is formed and the miner gets the newly generated Bitcoins (25 per block at current levels). If the hash is not less than the current target, a new nonce is tried, and a new hash is calculated. This is done millions of times per second by each miner.
Is mining used for some useful computation?
The computations done when mining are internal to Bitcoin and not related to any other distributed computing projects. They serve the purpose of securing the Bitcoin network, which is useful.
Is it not a waste of energy?
Spending energy on creating and securing a free monetary system is hardly a waste. Also, services necessary for the operation of currently widespread monetary systems, such as banks and credit card companies, also spend energy, arguably more than Bitcoin would.
Why don't we use calculations that are also useful for some other purpose?
To provide security for the Bitcoin network, the calculations involved need to have some very specific features. These features are incompatible with leveraging the computation for other purposes.
How can we stop miners from creating zero transaction blocks?
The incentive for miners to include transactions is in the fees that come along with them. If we were to implement some minimum number of transactions per block it would be trivial for a miner to create and include transactions merely to surpass that threshold. As the network matures, the block reward drops, and miners become more dependent on transactions fees to pay their costs, the problem of zero transaction blocks should diminish over time.
How does the proof-of-work system help secure Bitcoin?
Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work with a minor adaption. To give a general idea of the mining process, imagine this setup:
payload = <some data related to things happening on the Bitcoin network> nonce = 1 hash = SHA2( SHA2( payload + nonce ) )
The work performed by a miner consists of repeatedly increasing "nonce" until the hash function yields a value, that has the rare property of being below a certain target threshold. (In other words: The hash "starts with a certain number of zeroes", if you display it in the fixed-length representation, that is typically used.)
As can be seen, the mining process doesn't compute anything special. It merely tries to find a number (also referred to as nonce) which - in combination with the payload - results in a hash with special properties.
The advantage of using such a mechanism consists of the fact, that it is very easy to check a result: Given the payload and a specific nonce, only a single call of the hashing function is needed to verify that the hash has the required properties. Since there is no known way to find these hashes other than brute force, this can be used as a "proof of work" that someone invested a lot of computing power to find the correct nonce for this payload.
This feature is then used in the Bitcoin network to allow the network to come to a consensus on the history of transactions. An attacker that wants to rewrite history will need to do the required proof of work before it will be accepted. And as long as honest miners have more computing power, they can always outpace an attacker.
Also see Hashcash and Proof-of-work system and SHA2 and on Wikipedia.
Why was the "Generate coin" option of the client software removed?
The option wasn't removed, but it is now only accessible via the command-line or the configuration file. The reason for this is that many users were complaining after they turned on and expecting to receive coins. Without specialized mining hardware a user is exceptionally unlikely generate a block on their own at the network's current security level.
Could miners collude to give themselves money or to fundamentally change the nature of Bitcoin?
There are two questions in here. Let's look at them separately.
- Could miners gang up and give themselves money?
Mining itself is the process of creating new blocks in the block chain. Each block contains a list of all the transactions that have taken place across the entire Bitcoin network since the last block was created, as well as a hash of the previous block. New blocks are 'mined', or rather, generated, by Bitcoin clients correctly guessing sequences of characters in codes called 'hashes,' which are created using information from previous blocks. Bitcoin users may download specialized 'mining' software, which allows them to dedicate some amount of their processing power – however large or small – to guessing at strings within the hash of the previous block. Whoever makes the right guess first, thus creating a new block, receives a reward in Bitcoins.
The block chain is one of the two structures that makes Bitcoin secure, the other being the public-key encryption system on which Bitcoin trade is based. The block chain assures that not only is every single transaction that ever takes place recorded, but that every single transaction is recorded on the computer of anyone who chooses to store the relevant information. Many, many users have complete records of every transaction in Bitcoins history readily available to them at any point, and anyone who wants in the information can obtain it with ease. These things make Bitcoin very hard to fool.
The Bitcoin network takes considerable processing power to run, and since those with the most processing power can make the most guesses, those who put the most power toward to sustaining the network earn the most currency. Each correct guess yields, at present, twenty-five Bitcoins, and as Bitcoins are presently worth something (although the value still fluctuates) every miner who earns any number of Bitcoins makes money. Some miners pull in Bitcoins on their own; and some also join or form pools wherein all who contribute earn a share of the profits.
Therefore, first answer is a vehement "yes" – not only can miners collude to get more money, Bitcoin is designed to encourage them to do so. Bitcoin pools are communal affairs, and there is nothing dishonest or underhanded about them.
Of course, the real question is:
- Can they do so in ways not sanctioned by Bitcoin network? Is there any way to rip off the network and make loads of money dishonestly?
Bitcoin isn't infallible. It can be cheated, but doing so is extremely difficult. Bitcoin was designed to evade some of the central problems with modern currencies – namely, that their trustworthiness hinges upon that of people who might not have users' best interests in mind. Every currency in the world (other than Bitcoin) is controlled by large institutions who keep track of what's done with it, and who can manipulate its value. And every other currency has value because people trust the institutions that control them.
Bitcoin doesn't ask that its users trust any institution. Its security is based on the cryptography that is an integral part of its structure, and that is readily available for any and all to see. Instead of one entity keeping track of transactions, the entire network does, so Bitcoins are astoundingly difficult to steal, or double-spend. Bitcoins are created in a regular and predictable fashion, and by many different users, so no one can decide to make a whole lot more and lessen their value. In short, Bitcoin is designed to be inflation-proof, double-spend-proof and completely distributed.
Nonetheless, there are a few ways that one can acquire Bitcoins dishonestly. Firstly, one can steal private keys. Key theft isn't something that Bitcoin security has been designed to prevent: it's up to users to keep their keys safe. But the cryptography is designed so that it is completely impossible to deduce someone's private key from their public one. As long as you keep your private key to yourself, you don't have much to worry about. Furthermore, one could theoretically create a new block chain, but due to the way in which the block chain is constructed, this would be extremely difficult and require massive amounts of processing power. A full explanation of the difficulties involved can be found in the block chain article.
Bitcoin can be ripped off – but doing so would be extremely hard and require considerable expertise and a staggering amount of processing power. And it's only going to get harder with time. Bitcoin isn't impenetrable, but it's close enough to put any real worries in the peripherals.
- Could miners fundamentally change the nature of Bitcoin?
Once again, almost certainly not.
Bitcoin is a distributed network, so any changes implemented to the system must be accepted by all users. Someone trying to change the way Bitcoins are generated would have to convince every user to download and use their software – so the only changes that would go through are those that would be equally benefit all users.
And thus, it is more or less impossible for anyone to change the function of Bitcoin to their advantage. If users don't like the changes, they won't adopt them, whereas if users do like them, then these will help everyone equally. Of course, one can conceive of a situation where someone manages to get a change pushed through that provides them with an advantage that no one notices, but given that Bitcoin is structurally relatively simple, it is unlikely that any major changes will go through without someone noticing first.
The fact that such changes are so difficult to make testifies to the fully distributed nature of Bitcoin. Any centrally controlled currency can be modified by its central agency without the consent of its adherents. Bitcoin has no central authority, so it changes only at the behest of the whole community. Bitcoins development represents a kind of collective evolution; the first of its kind among currencies.
I'd like to learn more. Where can I get help?
- Read the introduction to bitcoin
- See the videos, podcasts, and blog posts from the Press
- Read and post on the forums
- Chat on one of the Bitcoin IRC channels
- Listen to this podcast, which goes into the details of how bitcoin works
- Ask questions on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange
See also


text:
From the USCIS website:
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reminds customers affected by Hurricane Sandy of certain U.S. immigration benefits or relief that may be available to them.
USCIS understands that a natural disaster can affect an individual's ability to maintain lawful immigration status or obtain certain other immigration benefits. Eligible individuals may request or apply for temporary relief measures, including:
- A change or extension of nonimmigrant status for an individual currently in the United States, even when the request is filed after the authorized period of admission has expired;
- Extension or re-parole of individuals previously granted parole by USCIS;
- Expedited adjudication of off-campus employment authorization applications for F-1 students experiencing severe economic hardship;
- Expedited adjudication of employment authorization applications; and
- Assistance to Legal Permanent Residents (LPR) stranded overseas without immigration or travel documents, such as Permanent Resident Cards (Green Cards). USCIS and the Department of State will coordinate on these matters when LPRs are stranded in places that do not have a local USCIS office.
Where appropriate, USCIS may exercise its discretion to allow for delays in filing resulting from the hurricane. This may include, for example:
- Assistance to those who have not appeared for an interview or submitted required forms of evidence. You may show how the disrupting event affected your connection to USCIS and your ability to appear or submit documents as required; and
- Assistance to those who have not been able to respond to Requests For Evidence (RFEs) or Notices of Intent to Deny (NOID). USCIS will extend the deadline for individuals to respond to RFEs or NOIDs by 30 days. This will apply to all RFEs and NOIDs with a deadline of October 26 through November 26, 2012. During this time, USCIS will not issue denials based on abandonment of an application or petition.
Visitors traveling under the Visa Waiver Program may visit a local USCIS office for assistance. Please check whether your local USCIS office is open before going. Individuals affected by the hurricane who are at a U.S. airport may contact the nearest U.S. Customs and Border Protection office for assistance.
For more information on USCIS humanitarian programs, visit www.uscis.gov or call the National Customer Service Center at 1-800-375-5283. Hearing-impaired persons can call 1-800-767-1833.
Please check back at www.uscis.gov for any additional information that may follow.


text:
In contrast, having a high body-mass index -- a measure of weight in relation to height, often used to gauge obesity -- was not associated with early death in the study.
The investigators said the findings support the idea that BMI is a fairly crude measure that may not reflect a person's body composition, or be a good indicator of health.
Someone with a lot of muscle mass, for example, may have a high BMI and, technically, fall into the "overweight" category, explained researcher Dr. William Leslie.
So the relationship between body size and health "is more nuanced than the number on your bathroom scale," said Leslie, a professor of medicine and radiology at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada.
"It's important to be attuned to what you're made of, rather than just how much you weigh," Leslie said.
The findings, published online March 8 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, may offer one explanation for the so-called "obesity paradox."
That refers to a counterintuitive pattern that's been seen in a number of studies: Overweight and moderately obese people with heart disease or other chronic ills tend to outlive thinner people with those same conditions.
But those studies have often relied on BMI, Leslie explained. And it's possible that higher BMI reflects greater muscle mass and fitness, or less weight loss from a chronic disease -- as opposed to some protective effect of body fat, he added.
For their study, Leslie's team combed through data on more than 54,000 adults, mostly in their 60s, who'd undergone DXA scans to measure their bone density. Those bone scans have the bonus of allowing an estimate of a person's body fat percentage.
It turned out that men and women with the greatest amounts of body fat were more likely to die over the next four to seven years, the study showed.
Men in the top 20 percent had at least 36 percent body fat. And those with highest body fat were up to 59 percent more likely to die during the study period, versus men whose body fat was in the 28 percent to 32 percent range -- which was about average for the group, according to the study.
The difference was smaller among women. Still, those with the highest percentage of body fat -- about 39 percent fat or higher -- were 19 percent more likely to die during the study period, compared with women in the 30 percent to 34 percent range (about average for the group), the study found.
In contrast, people with a BMI high enough to land them in the "obese" category didn't show an increased death risk. And they were actually less likely to die than men and women with the lowest BMIs -- lower than 24 or 25, which includes people in the "normal" weight range, Leslie pointed out.
In these older adults, he explained, a lower BMI may reflect waning muscle mass or frailty.
A researcher not involved in the study agreed.
"I think these findings help clarify some of the confusion around the obesity paradox," said Rebecca Shenkman, director of the MacDonald Center for Obesity Prevention and Education at Villanova University College of Nursing, in Pennsylvania.
More importantly, she said, the findings highlight the limits of BMI as a health indicator. "We really need to take a step back and look at everything's that going on the body," Shenkman said.
And it's not only about body fat, she noted. Fitness levels matter, too: Studies have found that people who stay fit through exercise typically enjoy a longer life than couch potatoes -- even if they're overweight.
And, Shenkman said, it's possible to be thin and out-of-shape.
"Healthy eating and regular exercise are more important than being skinny," she said.
Leslie made the same point. "In our society," he said, "there's been this mantra that thin is 'in,' and being heavy is 'bad.' But health is about more than the number on your scale."
He did not, however, suggest that people run out to have their body fat measured. Taking a tape measure to your waistline, for example, is a simpler way to estimate how much fat you're carrying, Leslie noted.
Women who have a waist circumference of more than 35 inches have a higher risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes, according to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. For men, a waist circumference greater than 40 inches indicates an increased risk of health problems, the NHLBI says.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on maintaining a healthy weight.
Copyright © 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


text:
Big news from my other employer, WGBH: Henry Santoro will be joining WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) as a news anchor. Henry announced the move this morning on The Boston Globe's online radio station, RadioBDC, where he had worked since 2012.
Henry and I worked together for years at The Boston Phoenix, where he was the morning news guy on WFNX Radio. His then-future wife, Thea Singer, showed me the ropes when I started as a copy editor at the Phoenix in 1991. When 'FNX closed three years ago, the Globe responded by creating RadioBDC — and hired Henry, Julie Kramer and other longtime 'FNX people. I enjoyed my occasional appearances with Henry on 'FNX, and it would be fun if we could do it at 'GBH as well.
WGBH has proved to be a magnet for members of the Phoenix diaspora. Henry joins WGBHNews.org senior editor Peter Kadzis, staff reporter Adam Reilly, political commentator David Bernstein and me. Congratulations to Henry, for whom I have one piece of advice: in public broadcasting, we spell it D-E-A-D.
Here's the memo to the staff from WGBH Radio general manager Phil Redo:
Hi all:
I am very happy to announce that Henry Santoro will be joining our daytime line-up of news anchors.
Since Jordan [Weinstein]'s departure both Cristina Quinn and Lynne Ashminov have been handling anchor responsibilities — I thank them both for their excellent work and I'm pleased they will each continue to be part of our on-air news team.
Henry joins us from The Boston Globe's radio property "RadioBDC" where he has been news director since 2012….
Before The Globe, from 1983 until 2012, Henry was a fixture on the morning radio dial, serving as the award winning news director and morning news anchor for WFNX-FM, owned by the Boston Phoenix. He worked very closely with several of our current WGBH News staff and contributors, including Peter Kadzis, Adam Reilly, David Bernstein and Dan Kennedy.
During the more than 30 years he has been a morning anchor, Henry has brought to audiences many of the most significant stories of our era beginning with the AIDS crisis in the early 1980's to 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, the first election of Mayor Menino to the election if the first African American President. Along the way he has interviewed cultural and political personalities as wide ranging as Andy Warhol, Mitt Romney, Allen Ginsberg and Yoko Ono. And, so important to us, he is extremely plugged in to the local scene and should help us continue to deepen our commitment to being Boston's LOCAL NPR. We may even consider bringing to WGBH his popular feature about community happenings called "Henry in the Hub."
A strong communicator with a very conversational delivery, Henry has done both long and short form content and is a big proponent of the team approach within newsrooms, critical to our continuing development.
For ten years Henry was an Adjunct professor at Emerson College where he taught radio and journalism courses. He is himself a graduate of Emerson [see correction below], and also an Associate of Arts in Communication and Journalism from Northeast College of Communications.
He is an art collector ( he lectures on Andy Warhol 2-3 times a year), loves cooking ( he owns more than 5-thousand cookbooks!) and music.
Please join me in welcoming Henry Santoro to WGBH News. His first day will most likely be Tuesday, April 21st.
Correction. Henry posted this on Facebook: "Just for the record, I am not a graduate of Emerson College. I did teach there for over ten years, and I am an honorary member of their Phi Alpha Tau fraternity. I am a graduate of the now defunct Northeast College of Communications. That is all."


text:
The American Pregnancy Association Now Recommends Only Nightfood Ice Cream for Pregnant Women.
- The American Pregnancy Association Now Recommends Only Nightfood Ice Cream for Pregnant Women. It is Formulated with Less Sugar, Lower Fat, and Fewer Calories…Plus Minerals, Digestive Enzymes and Amino Acids for Better Sleep.
- Nightfood Featured Nationally on the Rachael Ray Show, The Today Show, Oprah Magazine, Wall Street Journal and More.
- New Distribution in Major Divisions of Both Kroger and Albertsons, Two Largest Supermarkets in the U.S. Other Supermarkets Also Added.
Unhealthy nighttime snacking has become a major problem for over 100,000,000 Americans…Humans are biologically programmed to crave junk at night. For millions, ice cream is the #1 choice. Over 80% of Americans snack regularly at night, combining to spend over $1B on nighttime snacks every week. A recent Harris Poll indicated most night snackers feel both guilty and out of control.
Nightfood (OTC: NGTF) is the fast-growing brand pioneering what experts project to be a multi-billion-dollar consumer category: sleep-friendly night snacking
After winning the prestigious 2019 Product of the Year award in the ice cream category in a Kantar survey of over 40,000 consumers, Nightfood also won the 2019 World Dairy Innovation Award as Best New Ice Cream.
On January 23rd NGTF announced that Founder and CEO Sean Folkson extended his existing share lock-up agreement into 2021. Mr. Folkson is the largest single NGTF shareholder so his commitment not to sell or decrease his equity position in the company demonstrates high confidence in the future appreciation of shareholder value.
On January 30th NGTF announced a partnership with WeStock's new "Radish" service, adding Jessie Trinchard as Sales Director. The program provides fast-growing brands a shared industry-leading sales director so they can reach $3M – $5M in revenues in a quick and affordable way. Her resume includes management and director experience in multiple national brands that have since been acquired for an aggregate of over $500 million dollars.
On February 20th NGTF announced that Nightfood ice cream is now formally being recommended as the Official Ice Cream of the American Pregnancy Association. The APA serves over five million women and families a month through their website.
Over 10,000 new women enter the pregnancy demographic daily, proactively looking to make healthy lifestyle changes. Ice cream is the #1 pregnancy craving. Management believes this endorsement will accelerate sales velocity growth, and help secure thousands of additional points of supermarket distribution.
On February 24th Nightfood ice cream was featured nationally on the Rachael Ray Show. As a result, the NGTF website was overwhelmed with traffic and the company was inundated with orders and local supermarket product requests. The Rachael Ray segment may be re-viewed at any time on The Rachael Ray website.
On February 27th NGTF announced Nightfood ice cream will be available in all Jewel-Osco supermarket locations. This major Albertsons division has 188 locations encompassing Illinois, Northwest Indiana and Iowa. On March 09th NGTF announced a sharp increase in recent supermarket reorder velocity resulting in a record quarter for sales.
In addition to Jewel-Osco, the brand will be available in two other major regional chains in the coming weeks, one of which will stock seven flavors in most of their 150+ stores. The other new chain is expected to start with three or four flavors of Nightfood. Harris Teeter, a division of Kroger, has seven Nightfood flavors available in most of their approximately 260 stores, and Lowe's Foods has four flavors available in each of their 79 stores.
On March 9th NGTF announced a sharp increase in recent supermarket reorders. For the week ending March 6th, orders were received for twelve pallets of product, almost all of it to refill existing retail partners. Each pallet contains approximately 2,000 pints of Nightfood ice cream. This has been a record quarter for supermarket reorder volume. In addition, a significant amount of product has been shipped to distributors and wholesalers for new supermarket chains adding Nightfood.
On March 26th NGTF management announced that Nightfood ice cream is now available in Shaw's and Star Market locations. A division of Albertsons Companies, one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, Shaw's and Star Markets operates over 150 stores through most of New England, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island.
For more information on NGTF visit: www.nightfoodstock.com
Contact Detail:
Company Name: NightFood Holdings, Inc.
Contact Person: Customer Support
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Phone No: 888-888-6444
City: Tarrytown
State: NY
Country: United States
Website Url: www.nightfood.com


text:
There are likely to be a few things you don't understand about earwax. After all, it's not a normal part of a conversation, right? Like what's the job of this strange sticky substance and why is it made? Consider eight ever so interesting details about cerumen — that's earwax for most people — that you didn't even know were essential to hearing health.
1. Earwax is Not Really Wax
It's called wax, but it's not a wax at all. The name comes from the waxy texture. Earwax is made partially of skin cells from the auditory, or ear, the canal. This area contains skin that is always renewing itself. As dead cells drop off, they are pulled in to produce earwax.
Along with the dead skin cells, it also contains secretions from the ceruminous and the sebaceous glands. The ceruminous gland is a small sweat gland that sits just outside the ear canal. The sebaceous glands are located anywhere there is skin to provide the oil that keeps it lubricated.
The exact formula of earwax consists of:
- Fatty acids
- Squalene
- Alcohols
- Cholesterol
They combine with the dead skin cells to create this very necessary substance.
2. Earwax Safeguards Your Ears
It's role is to protect the skin inside the auditory canal. It takes just a small break in that skin to cause an infection that leads to an earache. The strange texture of the earwax lubricates this skin, as well, and it is a natural antimicrobial, so it stops bacterial infections before they can start.
Earwax is similar to other protective elements on the body like nose hairs or tears. You don't think much about them, either, but they an important part of preventing infection.
3. There are Different Kinds of Earwax
That's right, surprisingly not all earwax is the same. It comes in two forms: wet and dry. What kind you have depends on genetics just like eye color. Wet earwax is the dominant gene, so it's common for most people. Individuals with East Asian descent, from China or Korea, for example, usually have the recessive dry gene as do the Native American Indians. It's a detail important to anthropologists as they track the migration of different cultures throughout the world.
4. Earwax Cleans the Ears
Yes, that is another important function of earwax. Think of it as a conveyor belt. Debris, dead skin cells and bacteria get caught in the earwax. Every time the eardrum beats or you chew something, the belt moves toward the outside of the ear, taking all that gunk with it.
The movement of the jaw is responsible for dislodging the wax from the wall of the ear canal so that it can be expelled through the ear opening.
5. Too Little Earwax a Bad Thing
Everyone experiences itchy ears sometimes, but for some, it's a sign of too little earwax maybe due to excessive cleaning. Earwax is natural substance and self-clearing. There few reasons to try to dig it out, especially if your ears already itch.
That itch probably means the skin that covers the auditory canal is dry because there isn't enough earwax. Since, earwax is the natural lubrication of this skin, removing it will just lead to more itching. Instead, try a drop or two of mineral oil to moisten the dry skin.
6. Too Much Earwax is Bad Too
A buildup of earwax can lead to a temporary hearing loss. This usually happens when the wax is pushed back by a cotton swab, end of a pencil or whatever else you use to clean your ears. That push creates a ball that gets lodged. Sound travels as a vibration through the canal to the inner ear. That process is disrupted when there is an earwax blockage.
7. You Can Clear Earwax Out Safely
Not by shoving a cotton swab in the canal, though. There is a reason mom said not to put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.
If you have diabetes or problems with your ears, let the doctor clean them for you. If you do feel the need to do it yourself, a few drops of baby oil will soften the earwax and, hopefully, dislodge it. Once the wax is soft enough to come out, use a rubber-bulb syringe to gently move room temperature water through the ear. When the water is in place, tilt your ear to the side and allow it to drain out.
Dry the outside of your ear with a clean towel. If you are prone to swimmer's ear or ear infections, a few drops of rubbing alcohol will ensure all the water dries up.
8. Not All Hearing Loss is Due to Earwax
If your hearing doesn't return after your ears are cleared, talk to your doctor. A professional ear exam and a hearing test can pinpoint that problem, so you can start to hear again even if it means you need hearing aids.


text:
So do biological gender differences matter, or is any reference to "biological sex" bigoted?
"Teaching children they might be born in the wrong body is psychological child abuse."
By Cathy Ruse
First published in The Stream, 11-7-18
One of the most liberal school systems in the country wants parents to know that boys and girls are built differently. Except when that truth is not politically convenient.
The Fairfax County (Virginia) School Board announced an upcoming workshop for parents. It's called "Jack's Brain, Jill's Brain: Gender Differences and Why They Matter." The workshop will feature child psychologists discussing how "girls and boys learn differently." Apparently, "rapidly emerging research" shows that "the brains of females and males are developmentally, structurally and functionally different."
But, do they really mean this? After all, this is the school board that voted to teach children that biological sex is meaningless.
A Search-and-Destroy Mission
Last spring by a vote of 10-2, the nation's 10th largest school system made a search-and-destroy mission through its 80 hours of Sex Ed (per student). Every reference to human beings having a "biological sex" of male or female was removed. Children are now taught that "sex is assigned at birth" and subject to change.
Parents and taxpayers in Fairfax County tried to stop them. When the proposal was open to public comment, over 1,000 comments came in and 83% opposed the change. But the school board had no interest in the views of parents and people who pay their salaries. Only in pushing their brand of sex politics on the children under their control.
No one is born a boy or girl. Some girls have penises. Don't be a hater.
It's impossible to square the curriculum changes with the upcoming parent workshop. The school board is either lying to the children or they're lying to the parents.
Well, they're lying to the children; but it's even worse than that.
Read the rest of this article »


text:
The question is that AI is the product of I (could you imagine the contrary?) so it cannot be smarter that its producer. Is there someone to argue that?
First. Who has produced the robots? Human.
Just as well, if we're 'wild & stupid', then it should be easier to construct AI that matches our intellect
Tzok: "Then the "only problem" human needs to solve is to program the algorithm appropriately." Well that's where we differ. It's a classical problem: to put the question the right way means to almost answer it, something like that.
for i := 0 to 1000: output i
One more from you: "is there EVER a possibility to create true artificial intelligence? Second - if yes, where are we now?"I'm an optimist, I believe yes. Where are we now? The same place as ever before, may be even farther from the solution than we where in Rennaissance age for instance. At that time naturalists constructed mechanisms and made an autopsy by their own hands. And now you have only be able to push the computer key to be a scientist.
I think the first thing on the way to create an AI is to establish what an "ordinary" intelligence is and how it can be reproduced or replicated.Do you agree with that?


text: These are new & used items in-stock & ready to ship. To buy or make an offer, please add-to-cart, enter the required billing & shipping information, make your offer in the 'notes' field & submit. If your offer is accepted; UPS shipping will be added, your credit card will be charged & the item will ship within 24hrs of your card being charged. If your offer is not accepted, we will likely email you with a counter offer. We absolutely will NOT charge your credit card until a price is agreed upon by both of us. Thank you for stopping by the site. We think you'll agree these are good deals.


text:
Protodroid DeLTA, published by Humble Games, developer by Adam Kareem. Game release date 25 May, 2023. This game is Action, Adventure, Indie category. Protodroid DeLTA trainer is a support tools not cheat, trainer works on all version. Fling Trainer compatible with Windows 8, 10 and 11 versions. PC game trainers are standalone programs that unlock powerful cheats and new features in games, let's look at the trainer details.
Protodroid DeLTA PC Trainer Installation
Trainer have a 6+ functions and works in all versions of the game. To run the program unzip the archive, run Trainer and click game icon and open the game. You can open the options by pressing the F4 key.
Key Settings
– Numpad 0
– Numpad 1
– Numpad 2
– Numpad 3
– Numpad 4
– Numpad 5
Default value is 7, max value is 21. If you want to restore its effect, please set the value back to default.
File Size: 11 MB.


text:
News Release, October 8, 2018: The Australian Government will invest $1 million to improve recovery and rehabilitation and help stroke survivors back to work. The Government package includes $750,000 specifically designated for funding a clinical trial of the innovative Perispinal Etanercept Stroke Treatment in Australia. "The project will enable more Australians of working age who have had a stroke to access new innovative and cutting edge treatment options to aid their recovery."
Perispinal etanercept for treatment of chronic post-stroke neurological dysfunction is a treatment method invented and developed by Edward Tobinick M.D., Medical Director and Founder of the Institute of Neurological Recovery.
More at this link: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ministers/publishing.nsf/Content/health-mediarel-yr2018-hunt134.htm


text:
Omni Sync Server is a free service that enables all of your Omni apps to sync between all of your devices. This includes our Mac and iOS apps and OmniFocus for the Web.
Your tasks and perspectives everywhere. Near-instant push sync across all platforms: Mac, iOS, and web.
Your Graffle documents and stencils on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. All in sync with OmniPresence.
Your Outliner documents and templates on iPad, iPhone, and Mac. All in sync with OmniPresence.
In Standard your Plan files will sync with OmniPresence. With Pro, Publish & Subscribe will track changes and share resource load among projects.


text:
Showing 25–28 of 28 results
We stock a great range of local and international brands to cater to your needs. Begin your search by the brands you like.
We just don't sell fireplaces, We do Installation as well. Please contact our office to enquire more about our installation services.
If you're not unsure about what fireplace is right for you, simply contact us and let our friendly team make a recommendation for you.
You are more than welcome to Victoria's most trusted fireplace store – showcasing fireplaces and accessories unlike the other.


text:
How was everyone's weekend? I can't help but be envious of anyone who got an Easter basket yesterday. For my entire life I've wanted one, is that weird? You better believe that I will be taking advantage of the post-Easter candy sales, though! I hope I can get my hands on some of those solid milk chocolate Hershey's eggs with the pastel candy shells, they have been my favorite Easter candy forever.
While I didn't get an Easter basket, I did have a wonderful weekend, one of the best in a while. We spent both Friday and Saturday nights with family for the Passover seders. It was such a nice treat that we got to be with both my family and Matt's family on Saturday.
I have to admit that the weekend highlight, though, was Saturday morning and afternoon. That was the first day since I don't remember when that Matt and I got to just relax and do whatever we wanted for the better part of a Saturday. It started with sleeping "late" (i.e. 7am) and then proceeding to be in my PJs all day while we watched TV and started planning a vacation. Speaking of which, would someone like to plan that vacation for us?
After months of working around the clock every.single.day. and a head full of stress, it was the best Saturday I could have asked for. It was sad to see the weekend end, but next weekend we are going on a mini getaway to Philly. We had a credit for a hotel stay so we are taking advantage of it to get some time to ourselves. Any suggestions of things we should do are welcome. Note: I grew up outside of Philly so we have already done all of the regular tourist stuff.
For Saturday's seder, I brought dessert of course. After being on my feet all week I was happy to have some leftover Matzo Crack and Flourless Brownies (special requests) from Passover orders. I did want to make a little something else, though. With all the extra egg whites I had in my fridge, I had big plans for a fancy pavlova. However, tired feet and lack of sleep got the best of me so I stuck with something simple, meringue cookies. I spiced them up with chopped chocolate chunks and you know what? These were such a hit! I'll say it again, the key to Passover desserts is sticking with things that aren't meant to be something else. Naturally flourless is key.
Chocolate Chunk Meringues
Makes ~6 dozen meringues
Note: Before making your meringues, make sure your mixing bowl and whisk attachment are very clean. I wiped mine down with white vinegar to ensure there was no leftover grease to prevent the meringue from forming.
6 egg whites
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
8 ounces dark chocolate, roughly chopped
Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees; line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside
In the large bowl of an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites, cream of tartar and salt at medium speed until the mixture has formed soft peaks
In crease the speed to medium high and slowly add the granulated sugar, one heaping tablespoon at a time
Keep mixing for several minutes until the meringue is stiff and glossy
Remove bowl from mixer and gently fold in the chocolate
Use a teaspoon to drop meringues onto prepared baking sheets about 1/2 inch apart (they do not expand much in the oven)
Place baking sheets in the middle and lower portions of the oven; bake for 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes or until meringues are firm and no longer spongy; the edges may start to brown
Remove parchment paper from the baking sheets and allow to cool; store in an airtight container away from humidity up to three days
Adapted from Food and Wine
There is another dessert giveaway on Chocolate and Carrots today! Go check it out and say hi to Caroline:-)