I wrote a piece for Linux Voice on how bitcoin works a couple of years ago. It's obviously focused on this particular blockchain, not the principal in general and it's a couple of years old now. I tried to give a good overview for techincal people : https://www.linuxvoice.com/bitcoin/
It's usually a bad idea to run email from a home internet connection because it massively increases the chances of your mail being marked as spam. The hardest part of running a mail server is making sure your mail gets through spam filters, and the IP is critical to this.
Here in the UK we do have pretty regular problems with the water supply, to the point that hosepipe use is sometimes regulated. There's even a website you can check to see if there's currently a hosepipe ban: http://www.hosepipeban.org.uk/hosepipe-ban-current-situation...
It does rain a lot here, but there's also issues with the size of the reservoirs and the amount of water being drawn.
I visited Scotland in the spring and there was water trickling everywhere. I should have qualified my statement much better.
The other error I made was extrapolation from Scotland to the whole of the UK. Here in the US it takes a lot of travel to go from one "region" to another, and the conditions change slowly. But I could see that the whole of the UK doesn't necessarily have uniform conditions either.
Wow, CC BY-SA (Share-alike) and not CC BY-NC-SA (Non Commercial) like I expected. I commend you guys for believing in your publishing model and vision by taking that risk.
I believe that a common method of insulating mud-built buildings in cooler climates is mixing straw with the mud. There's probably some method of incorporating something similar either inside the bags or as an external layer. This wouldn't have to be straw, it could be something longer lasting with similar thermal properties.
I ran a Tor exit node for about nine months and only ever had two complaints sent to me. Both were for people performing some form of hacking through my exit node. I responded to both with a form letter, and that was that. Granted it was a low bandwidth exit node.
I hear US-based nodes get more legal attention because of the DMCA, but I can't comment on that as mine was based in Romania as well.
I cycle commute in a hilly city (Bristol, UK), and I think you're just a little inexperienced at cycling for work.
I can cycle hard and sweat, or I can cycle gently and sweat very little. We don't have a shower in the office, but I don't cycle too hard to work, and change shirt when I get in. It's not a problem. On the way home, I cycle hard and have a shower.
I can stay completely dry when cycling by simply carrying waterproofs. I just make it routine to always have these. It's true that these make it a little sweatier, but a change of clothes solves this problem.
Cycling isn't going to be suitable for every journey. However, 15% is quite a small target when you think about all the little trips people need. Things like cheap electric cars can be useful for the remaining 85%.
Note that perspiration and metabolism in general varies greatly by person. Some people can ride a bike and not sweat; others will sweat, whatever they do (even if they are in a reasonably good shape).
I can do 160 km in a day on a bike (maybe more but that's the record over past year), but I can't do 2 km so that I wouldn't have to change shirt and preferably take a shower if I'm going to a business meeting.
> you're just a little inexperienced at cycling for work
It's possible. But please note that I don't exactly go to "work" in my own office where I would have the liberty of changing shirts at will; I visit clients and usually go there for a specific meeting.
Maybe I could arrive early and change in the men's room, but that would still be a big hassle. And when I visit two or more clients in the same day, how many shirts would I end up carrying? And who's ironing these? (If you must know, I iron my own shirts, and like to make them last more than a day whenever possible...)
I said in another post that I never met anyone at my clients' offices who commuted by bicycle, but actually I did; last year I met a man who lived in Nanterre and worked in the center of Paris. So he took a bike in the morning, going downhill, and went back home in the evening using the subway.
This only works because there are special trucks that take back Velibs uphill every night; he couldn't do that with his own bike. The Velib trucks didn't exist when there wasn't any Velib, so it's unclear if this guy's behavior actually saves a lot of fossil energy or just a little.
> And when I visit two or more clients in the same day, how many shirts would I end up carrying?
Carry two shirts, one for cycling in and one for working. Before getting on your bike, change into your cycling shirt, then switch at the other end. The one for cycling obviously doesn't need to be ironed.
A good approach is to get an e-bike. Use a lot electric assist most of the way to work and pedal the way back. You also get less exhausted when arriving at your destination.
e-bikes are an absolute revolution for biking anywhere that isn't perfectly flat, I wonder what's taking so long for it to take over Europe.
I did look into that when my motorbike was stolen. I would actually like to have an electric bike, I think it's great.
I was put off by what they say about batteries, that if you don't take great care of it, leave it plugged in at all times, etc., it can die -- it amounts for 70% of the price of the bike.
Better batteries would be great; maybe Tesla will help.
We use Paypal, Stripe, GoCardless (UK only I think), and Bitpay.
Although we are obviously aware of Paypal's mood swings, we haven't been the victim of any. So far all of the above have worked well for us. They've all been easy to integrate.
In the UK you can get a bike for comparable prices (here's an £80 mountain bike). Again, they'll fall apart aftera few months though. The cheapest decent bike? Hmm, personally, I'd guess around £300, but I haven't done enough research to know for sure.
