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I don’t know that it was the dumbest, but it was certainly an interesting and unusual complaint against me.I was notified that officers were at a housing project and were requesting permission to force entry into an apartment. The officers had identified a man who had multiple warrants for his arrest. As they were arresting him he broke away from them and ran into an apartment where he did not belong.I was a Watch commander at the time and advised them to set up a perimeter around the apartment and I would be there in two minutes. Upon my arrival, I knocked on the door and spoke with the tenant who was very angry that my officers were threatening to kick down her door.I had an advantage in speaking with this woman as I knew the complex manager and I also had studied the lease agreements with the various complexes. One reason for an immediate start of eviction proceedings was allowing criminal activity to be conducted at the apartment. I explained that I did not want to see her violate her lease, or have to pay for the door if the police had to break it in.I explained the search process, and that we were just going to take the man who ran into her house into custody, and leave, without messing anything up inside. She allowed the officers to enter as long as I agreed to stay at the scene. I entered with the officers and actually helped in the search, checking one downstairs closet.The man was found upstairs fully dressed in bed under the covers (so creative). He was taken into custody and transported to the department for processing.Several minutes after I get to the station, I receive a call from the resident. She said one of your cops stole $1000 from my apartment. I advised her that I would take the particulars of her complaint and get to the bottom of this immediately.I asked where the money had been located and she answered: “In the downstairs closet”. I thought for a minute and replied, “I’m the only one who searched the downstairs closet and I didn’t see or take any money.” She replied rather sarcastically “well it was there before you came in and it’s gone now, so if you didn’t take it, where’s my money.”Now my mind is going over each minute of the search, with no reasonable explanation. I asked to place the woman on hold for a minute and went to the processing room where the accused was.Also in the room was a young woman who was counting out a pile of cash. I asked whose money is this. The girl replied, “It’s my money and I’m posting his bail.”Now I remember, the girl was in the house. I said, “I saw you at the house, where did you get all that money from?” She replied,”From the closet downstairs.”I put the resident, who was the girl's mother, on speaker phone and had the daughter explain where the $1000 in bail money came from.I spoke to the mom afterwards and she apologized repeatedly. I told her it was already forgotten, and how much I had appreciated her cooperation at the scene, putting her trust in me.After that, she thought I was a good cop and would wave to me or stop and say hello. Out of a silly misunderstanding, a higher level of trust would develop. So much of police work is about building trust, one person at a time.

Q: Is there any way to prove that NASA actually discovered 7 new planets? Or do we just take their word?NASA announced the discovery in a press release on February 22, 2017[1]. They have been involved, but TRAPPIST-1[2] wasn't their discovery. The star that the newly discovered planets orbit around was discovered in 1999 during the Two Micron All-Sky Survey[3] by observatories in Arizona and Chile.Later, the system was studied by a team at the University of Liège, who used the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. It was announced in May, 2016 that three planets were discovered in the system. Then, several ground-based telescopes including European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope along with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope[4] confirmed the discovery a found additional planets bringing the total to seven.The results were published in the prestigious journal Nature "Seven temperate terrestrial planets around the nearby ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1"[5] by initiator and lead Michael Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium and two dozen co-authors.So, you want to know if we should just take the word of this large team of collaborators (of which NASA is only part) because maybe they are just making the whole thing up?Well, you could start by downloading the paper from NATURE and going through the data yourself:"This diagram shows how the light of the dim red ultra cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 fades as each of its seven known planets passes in front of it and blocks some of its light. The larger planets create deeper dips and the more distance ones have longer lasting transits as they are orbiting more slowly. These data were obtained from observations made with the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope"[6]"This diagram shows the changing brightness of the ultra cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 over a period of 20 days in September and October 2016 as measured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and many other telescopes on the ground. On many occasions the brightness of the star drops for a short period and then returns to normal. These events, called transits, are due to one or more of the star’s seven planets passing in front of the star and blocking some of its light. The lower part of the diagram shows which of the system’s planets are responsible for the transits."[7]And if you really want to get your hands on some data, check out the latest from Kepler.[8] You can personally help discover more exo-planets by becoming a citizen scientist and sign up at Planet Hunters.[9] You don't need any special equipment other than a computer.Footnotes[1] NASA Telescope Reveals Record-Breaking Exoplanet Discovery[2] TRAPPIST-1 - Wikipedia[3] 2MASS - Wikipedia[4] Spitzer Space Telescope - Wikipedia[5] http://www.nature.com/nature/jou...[6] Light curves of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets as they transit[7] Light curve of TRAPPIST-1 — showing the dimming events caused by transits of planets[8] https://kepler.nasa.gov/[9] Planet Hunters

In 2016, the price of a bitcoin was $710.09. On February 21, 2019, the exchange rate for a single bitcoin was $3,890 and today, the exchange rate for a single bitcoin is $4,030. It doesn’t take an economics degree to know that the folks who invested in bitcoin a few years ago are now patting themselves on the back — but the good news is, it’s not too late to get in the game.Bitcoin. It’s one the biggest buzzwords in the financial technology industry right now, but also one of the least understood. With cryptocurrency back in the news again, now’s a better time than ever to delve into the weeds and learn more about how to invest. If you’re standing, sit down, because here’s a breakdown of everything you need to know before buying your first bitcoin — or deciding not to.Bitcoin Basics: Why People Buy CryptocurrencyYou don’t have to understand bitcoin to realize that banks, businesses, the bold, and the brash are cashing in on cryptocurrency. In 2016, the price of a bitcoin was $710.09. On February 21, 2019, the exchange rate for a single bitcoin was $3,890. It doesn’t take an economics degree to know that the folks who invested in bitcoin a few years ago are now patting themselves on the back — but the good news is, it’s not too late to get in the game.It may seem hard to believe that a digital currency could be worth thousands of dollars. After all, unlike physical currency like precious metals or printed money, bitcoin is just lines of code. So what makes bitcoin so valuable?The worth of currency used to be stipulated by precious metals. From 1879 until 1933, for example, Americans could trade the federal government $20.67 for an ounce of gold. For the United States, that all changed at the height of the Great Depression when America faced mounting unemployment rates and spiraling deflation. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to cut the United States’ ties to gold, effectively allowing the Federal Reserve to pump more money into the economy than the federal government had the gold to back.The United States now has what is called a “fiat” money system, meaning the dollar’s value is determined by faith, rather than a physical asset. The dollar, for example, is worth far more than the value of the ink and paper that it’s printed on. Bitcoin functions by the same principles. Although the lines of code that make up each bitcoin are worthless in and of themselves, the international market has come to value each bitcoin at thousands of dollars. That’s because bitcoin is scarce and becomes more difficult to obtain over time. Here’s why:When the bitcoin program was launched on January 3, 2009, bitcoin was produced at a rate of 50 bitcoin every 10 minutes, or 7,200 bitcoin every day. As of February 2019, 7,200 bitcoin would be worth about $28 million, but at the time each bitcoin was worth just a few cents.According to the bitcoin program, however, the rate that bitcoin is produced cuts in half about every four years. On November 28, 2012, for example, the rate of production changed from 50 to 25 bitcoin every 10 minutes, or 3,600 bitcoin every day. That rate halved again on July 9, 2016 to 12.5 bitcoin every 10 minutes and is expected to halve a fourth time sometime in 2020. At this rate, the total number of bitcoins in circulation will approach a limit of 21 million.The rate at which bitcoin can be produced cuts in half every four years, meaning that the currency becomes more difficult to obtain over time. In fact, as of February 2019, 17.37 million, or 82.70%, of the total bitcoin have already been created. If the demand for bitcoin exceeds the rate at which it can be produced, the price will increase. That means investing in bitcoin now should be a sure fire bet to pay off four years down the road, right? Well, it’s complicated.If you’re anything like me, chances are your eyes glaze over at cautionary tales, words of wisdom, and long-winded explainers. That’s all fine and well for the real world, but when it comes to buying and selling cryptocurrency, the most valuable investment you can make is time. Cryptocurrencies are wildly unpredictable, even ones as popular as bitcoin. Although bitcoin is worth $3,890 today, it was also worth $19,783.21 on December 17, 2017.The value of bitcoin is heavily dependent on (a) the faith of investors, (b) the integration of cryptocurrency into current financial institutions, and (c) the public’s willingness to learn and use a new form of currency. Research is key when you’re investing in stocks, but it’s life-saving when you’re investing in cryptocurrency. That’s why we’ve taken the time to explain the technology behind bitcoin before showing you how to buy it. If you feel ready to leave the training wheels behind, you can skip to “Step One: Sign Up for a Bitcoin Wallet.”How Does Bitcoin Work?Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies operate on a technology called “blockchain.” You may have heard of blockchain referred to as a “distributed, decentralized, public ledger,” but the technology is actually easier to understand than that definition sounds. At its most basic level, blockchain is literally a chain of blocks — only not in the traditional sense of those words. When we say the words “block” and “chain” in this context, we are actually talking about digital information (the “block”) stored in an online database (the “chain”). Here’s how it works.You have all these people, all over the world, who have bitcoin. According to a 2017 study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the number may be as many as 5.9 million. Let’s say one of those 5.9 million people wants to spend one or many of their Bitcoin. This is where blockchain comes in.With other public recorders of information, like the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Wikipedia, or your local library, there’s someone in charge of vetting new data entries. With blockchain, however, that job is left up to a network of computers. These networks often consist of thousands (or in the case of Bitcoin, about 5 million) computers spread across the globe. When you go to make a purchase using bitcoin, that network of computers rushes to check that your transaction happened in the way you said it did. They confirm the details of the purchase, including the transaction’s time, dollar amount, and participants.When consumers make purchases using the U.S. dollar, banks and credit card companies verify the accuracy of those transactions. Bitcoin performs this same function without these institutions using a system called “hashing.” When one person pays another for goods using bitcoin, computers on the bitcoin blockchain rush to check that your transaction is accurate. In order to add new transactions to the blockchain, a computer must solve a complex mathematical problem, called a “hash.”Solving a hash takes computers, and even supercomputers, an average of 10 minutes. During that time, computers also check the accuracy of new transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. If a computer is the first to solve a hash, they store newly-made transactions as a block on the blockchain, at which point they become unalterable.How is Bitcoin Created?When computers successfully add a block to the blockchain, they are rewarded with cryptocurrency. Earlier we discussed how the amount of bitcoin produced every 10 minutes cuts in half every four years. At the time of writing, computers receive 12.5 bitcoin, or approximately $48,625 USD, for each block that they add to the blockchain.If the tune of $48,625 sounds enticing, be warned that the process of adding blocks to the blockchain, what the cryptocurrency world calls “mining,” is not easy. In fact, the odds of solving one of these problems on the Bitcoin network are about one in seven trillion (12 zeros). To put that number in perspective, the odds of winning the jackpot lottery are one in 13 million. To solve complex math problems at those odds, computers must run programs that cost them signNow amounts of power, energy, and money.Similar to winning the lottery, solving hashes essentially comes down to chance — but there are ways to increase your odds of winning in both contests. With bitcoin, arriving at the right answer before another miner has almost everything to do with how fast your computer can produce hashes. Just a decade ago, bitcoin mining could be performed competitively on normal desktop computers.Over time, however, miners realized that graphics cards commonly used for video games were more effective at mining than desktops and graphics processing units (GPU) came to dominate the game. In 2013, bitcoin miners began to use computers designed specifically for mining cryptocurrency as efficiently as possible, called Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC). These can run from $500 to the tens of thousands.Today, bitcoin mining is so competitive that it can only be done profitably with the most up-to-date ASICs. When using desktop computers, GPUs, or older models of ASICs, the cost of energy consumption actually exceeds the revenue generated. Even with the newest unit at your disposal, one computer is rarely enough to compete with what miners call "mining pools."A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin between participants. A disproportionately large number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. In July 2017, mining pools and companies represented roughly 80% to 90% of the computing power on the bitcoin network.In the real world, the power from the millions of computers mining on the bitcoin network is close to what Denmark consumes annually. All of that energy costs money and according to a recent study from research company Elite Fixtures, the cost of mining a single bitcoin varies drastically by location, from just $531 to a staggering $26,170. Based on average utility costs in the United States, that figure is closer to $4,758.What Do I Need to Buy Bitcoin?1. Digital Wallet: In order to conduct transactions on the bitcoin network, participants need to run a program called a “wallet.” Bitcoin are not technically “coins,” so it only seems right that a bitcoin wallet would not actually be a wallet. Instead of leather, wallets are made up of two unique and distinct cryptographic keys: a public key and a private key. The public key is the location where transactions are deposited to and withdrawn from. This is also the key that appears on the blockchain ledger as a user’s digital signature, not unlike a username on a social media newsfeed. The private key is the password required to buy, sell, and trade the bitcoin in a wallet.2. Personal Documents: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires users to verify their identities when registering for digital wallets as part of its Anti-Money Laundering Policy. In order to buy and sell bitcoin, you will need to verify your identity using several personal documents including your driver’s license and social security number.3. Secure Internet Connection: If you choose to trade bitcoin online, use discretion about when and where you access your digital wallet. Trading bitcoin on an insecure or public wifi network is not recommended and may make you more susceptible to attacks from hackers.4. Bank Account, Debit Card, or Credit Card: When you exchange USD or another currency for bitcoin, you will need funds to make those transactions. Bitcoin wallets can connect directly to your bank account, debit card, or credit card.5. Bitcoin Exchange: After you’ve set up your wallet with a payment method, you'll need a place to actually buy bitcoin. Users can buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from online marketplaces called “exchanges,” similar to the platforms that traders use to buy stock. Exchanges connect you directly to the bitcoin marketplace, where you can exchange traditional currencies for bitcoin.Before You Buy: Is Bitcoin Anonymous?Anyone can view a history of transactions made on the blockchain, even you. But while transactions are publicly recorded on the blockchain, identifying user information is not. When reviewing the transaction history of your bank account, for example, you’ll notice that the names of vendors are included on your bank statement. On the bitcoin blockchain, however, only a user’s public key appears next to a transaction — making transactions confidential but not anonymous.This is an important distinction. International researchers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have claimed time and again that they can track transactions made on the blockchain to user’s other online accounts, including their digital wallet. That’s a direct result of that Anti-Money Laundering Policy we mentioned earlier.Step One: Sign Up for a Bitcoin WalletIf you’ve made it through the winding road of explanations leading up to this point, congratulations! You may very well be ready to buy your first (fraction of a) bitcoin. The last thing you’ll need before you’re out the door is a place to store them.When it comes to choosing a bitcoin wallet, you have options, but the Louis Vuitton and Gucci of the cryptocurrency world right now are “software” and “hardware” wallets. Software wallets are mobile applications that connect with your traditional bank account. These wallets allow for quick and easy access to bitcoin, but the drawback is they put your money in the hands of a third-party company. Although the leading software wallets are trustworthy, popular third-party companies have collapsed, or been hacked, in the past. Much like you wouldn’t store thousands of dollars in your mattress, users with larger sums of bitcoin should consider storing their money more securely.Coinbase is the most popular software wallet available in the United States, in part because it has a website, mobile application, and stores 98 percent of customer currencies offline for added security. For beginners, Coinbase is the best and easiest place to start because it is connected directly to a bitcoin exchange, which simplifies the buying and selling process. Blockchain Explorer | BTC | ETH | BCH is another popular wallet connected to the bitcoin exchange, but the wallet is not supported by a mobile application. Users can also download mobile-only wallets such as Bitcoin Wallet for Android or Blockchain Bitcoin Wallet for iOS.Hardware wallets are a little more old-school but tend to be considered more secure because they are kept offline. These wallets store a user’s private key on a physical hardware device similar to a flash drive, which prevents hackers from accessing a user’s private key through an internet connection.Step Two: Connect a Bank AccountIn order to purchase bitcoin, you need to connect your wallet to a bank account, debit card, or credit card. Although these payment methods all perform the same function — exchanging traditional currency for bitcoin — they each carry their own set of fees.Transactions made using a bank account can take 4-5 days to process on Coinbase, but are generally recommended for first-time investors. By linking a bank account to your wallet, you can buy and sell bitcoin and deposit that money directly into your account. Bank accounts are generally recommended if you are dealing with larger sums of money. At the time of writing, bank accounts allow users to spend as much as $11,250 per week.Debit and credit cards, on the other hand, allow you to buy bitcoin almost instantly. The drawback is that on Coinbase and other popular exchanges, debit cards can only be used to purchase crypto — and even then, only in smaller amounts. Users cannot sell bitcoin or deposit money into their bank account when their wallet is connected to a debit card.Step Three: Choose a Bitcoin ExchangeBitcoin exchanges are online marketplaces where you can trade bitcoin for traditional currencies, say BTC for USD. Just like when you go to make a purchase online, you have options. There’s eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and Alibaba — to say nothing of the millions of private retailers who use these websites to sell their product. The same is true of buying bitcoin. Even if two exchanges trade the same cryptocurrency, it is likely that they each offer slightly different services. Exchanges can vary in reputation, reliability, security, processing fees, exchange rates, and cryptocurrencies available for trading. Before settling down with an exchange, date around. Here are our top five recommendations for where to start.Best for Beginners: CoinbaseCoinbase is the most popular and respected digital currency exchange in the United States. Although Coinbase only trades in five cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ethereum Classic — the exchange offers a way to securely buy and store cryptocurrency in one location. Coinbase charges a one percent fee for U.S. transactions from a bank account or Coinbase USD wallet. Purchases made using a credit or debit card are charged a 2.49 percent fee. Plus, Coinbase secures cash balances up to $250,000 in the event of theft or bsignNow in online storage.Best for On the Go: Square CashThe Square Cash app is a leader in peer-to-peer money transfers, right alongside PayPal-owned Venmo. The Cash app comes from Square, the company that makes those mobile credit card readers. Square is a huge financial technology company that includes many other services — one of which is trading bitcoin. The Cash App allows users to buy and sell bitcoin without processing fees. Unlike most online exchanges, the Cash App stores your bitcoin in your Square Cash Account, rather than a separate digital wallet. If you’re worried about security, however, you can send the bitcoin in your Square Cash Account to another wallet of your choosing. Square limits purchases at $10,000 per week, but there is no limit to what you can sell.Best for Bitcoin on a Budget: RobinhoodRobinhood launched in 2013 as a fee-free stock brokerage. In February 2018, the company expanded into the bitcoin and ethereum markets, along with market data for another 15 currencies, allowing users to trade cryptocurrency without a fee. As is the case with Square, Robinhood stores bitcoin in the same Robinhood account that is used for stocks. Robinhood is mobile first and just recently added a Web version, so it is best for people comfortable managing money from their phone or tablet. The drawback of trading bitcoin on Robinhood is that the application is only available in 17 states, as of February 2019.Best for Big Spenders: Coinbase Pro (Formerly GDAX)If you feel comfortable trading on Coinbase and want to step up your trading volume, you may be ready to switch from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro. Formerly known as Coinbase Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX), the trading platform uses interfaces similar to Bloomberg terminals and active stock, commodity, and option trading platforms. Coinbase Pro offers options to make market orders, limit orders, and stop orders in addition to traditional buying and selling. Instead of trading exclusively from USD to cryptocurrency, Coinbase Pro allows users to trade between cryptocurrencies, say between Ethereum and Bitcoin. Coinbase Pro charges fees ranging from 0.10 percent to 0.30 percent based on your trading volume. Most people trade less than $10 million per month and will fall into the 0.30 percent tier. If you want to try Coinbase but with much higher volume, this platform is the way to go.Best for Branching Out: BinanceBinance may be your best bet if you’re looking to diversify your cryptocurrency portfolio. The online exchange supports multiple currencies and even more digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and many fledgling cryptocurrencies you may not have heard of. Many exchanges that trade this many cryptocurrencies charge higher fees, but Binance charges a flat rate of 0.1 percent for trades. While this is platform offers a huge range of currencies at a low cost, there are some bugs reported with the Android mobile app and some users have reported delays withdrawing certain currencies.Best for Buying in Cash: Peer-to-PeerIf you have a wallet, but it isn’t connected to a bank account, debit, or credit card, you can buy bitcoin using cash through a peer-to-peer exchange. Unlike typical bitcoin wallets, peer-to-peer exchanges work similarly to Craigslist for cryptocurrency, allowing buyers and sellers in the same areas find each other and meet up to trade bitcoins for cash. With peer-to-peer exchanges, it’s important to remember that you are trading high-value currency with strangers you have never met before. If you choose to trade bitcoin in this way, we recommend that you meet buyers and sellers in a public place with high visibility.Best PracticesYour bitcoin exchange and bitcoin wallet do not need to be the same. While most exchanges offer wallets for their users, security is not their primary business. If you do choose to use a wallet offered by an exchange other than Coinbase, we do not recommend that you use that exchange's wallet to store bitcoins in large amounts or for long periods of time. Instead, make your transaction and transfer your bitcoin to a more secure wallet.Step Four: Place Your OrderOne exchange, three steps, and four thousand words later, you’re now ready to buy your first bitcoin. It’s important to keep in mind that although one bitcoin costs several thousand dollars, bitcoin can be divided up to eight decimal points. That means you can buy 1 bitcoin for $3,890, 0.1 bitcoin for $389, or even 0.00000001 bitcoin for $.0000389 if it suits your budget.Investing in cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings ("ICOs") is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Since each individual's situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted before making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or timeliness of the information contained herein. As of the date this article was written, the author owns no cryptocurrencies.is another popular wallet connected to the bitcoin exchange, but the wallet is not supported by a mobile application. Users can also download mobile-only wallets such as Bitcoin Wallet for Android or Blockchain Bitcoin Wallet for iOS.Hardware wallets are a little more old-school but tend to be considered more secure because they are kept offline. These wallets store a user’s private key on a physical hardware device similar to a flash drive, which prevents hackers from accessing a user’s private key through an internet connection.Step Two: Connect a Bank AccountIn order to purchase bitcoin, you need to connect your wallet to a bank account, debit card, or credit card. Although these payment methods all perform the same function — exchanging traditional currency for bitcoin — they each carry their own set of fees.Transactions made using a bank account can take 4-5 days to process on Coinbase, but are generally recommended for first-time investors. By linking a bank account to your wallet, you can buy and sell bitcoin and deposit that money directly into your account. Bank accounts are generally recommended if you are dealing with larger sums of money. At the time of writing, bank accounts allow users to spend as much as $11,250 per week.Debit and credit cards, on the other hand, allow you to buy bitcoin almost instantly. The drawback is that on Coinbase and other popular exchanges, debit cards can only be used to purchase crypto — and even then, only in smaller amounts. Users cannot sell bitcoin or deposit money into their bank account when their wallet is connected to a debit card.Step Three: Choose a Bitcoin ExchangeBitcoin exchanges are online marketplaces where you can trade bitcoin for traditional currencies, say BTC for USD. Just like when you go to make a purchase online, you have options. There’s eBay, Amazon, Etsy, and Alibaba — to say nothing of the millions of private retailers who use these websites to sell their product. The same is true of buying bitcoin. Even if two exchanges trade the same cryptocurrency, it is likely that they each offer slightly different services. Exchanges can vary in reputation, reliability, security, processing fees, exchange rates, and cryptocurrencies available for trading. Before settling down with an exchange, date around. Here are our top five recommendations for where to start.Best for Beginners: CoinbaseCoinbase is the most popular and respected digital currency exchange in the United States. Although Coinbase only trades in five cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ethereum Classic — the exchange offers a way to securely buy and store cryptocurrency in one location. Coinbase charges a one percent fee for U.S. transactions from a bank account or Coinbase USD wallet. Purchases made using a credit or debit card are charged a 2.49 percent fee. Plus, Coinbase secures cash balances up to $250,000 in the event of theft or bsignNow in online storage.Best for On the Go: Square CashThe Square Cash app is a leader in peer-to-peer money transfers, right alongside PayPal-owned Venmo. The Cash app comes from Square, the company that makes those mobile credit card readers. Square is a huge financial technology company that includes many other services — one of which is trading bitcoin. The Cash App allows users to buy and sell bitcoin without processing fees. Unlike most online exchanges, the Cash App stores your bitcoin in your Square Cash Account, rather than a separate digital wallet. If you’re worried about security, however, you can send the bitcoin in your Square Cash Account to another wallet of your choosing. Square limits purchases at $10,000 per week, but there is no limit to what you can sell.Best for Bitcoin on a Budget: RobinhoodRobinhood launched in 2013 as a fee-free stock brokerage. In February 2018, the company expanded into the bitcoin and ethereum markets, along with market data for another 15 currencies, allowing users to trade cryptocurrency without a fee. As is the case with Square, Robinhood stores bitcoin in the same Robinhood account that is used for stocks. Robinhood is mobile first and just recently added a Web version, so it is best for people comfortable managing money from their phone or tablet. The drawback of trading bitcoin on Robinhood is that the application is only available in 17 states, as of February 2019.Best for Big Spenders: Coinbase Pro (Formerly GDAX)If you feel comfortable trading on Coinbase and want to step up your trading volume, you may be ready to switch from Coinbase to Coinbase Pro. Formerly known as Coinbase Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX), the trading platform uses interfaces similar to Bloomberg terminals and active stock, commodity, and option trading platforms. Coinbase Pro offers options to make market orders, limit orders, and stop orders in addition to traditional buying and selling. Instead of trading exclusively from USD to cryptocurrency, Coinbase Pro allows users to trade between cryptocurrencies, say between Ethereum and Bitcoin. Coinbase Pro charges fees ranging from 0.10 percent to 0.30 percent based on your trading volume. Most people trade less than $10 million per month and will fall into the 0.30 percent tier. If you want to try Coinbase but with much higher volume, this platform is the way to go.Best for Branching Out: BinanceBinance may be your best bet if you’re looking to diversify your cryptocurrency portfolio. The online exchange supports multiple currencies and even more digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and many fledgling cryptocurrencies you may not have heard of. Many exchanges that trade this many cryptocurrencies charge higher fees, but Binance charges a flat rate of 0.1 percent for trades. While this is platform offers a huge range of currencies at a low cost, there are some bugs reported with the Android mobile app and some users have reported delays withdrawing certain currencies.Best for Buying in Cash: Peer-to-PeerIf you have a wallet, but it isn’t connected to a bank account, debit, or credit card, you can buy bitcoin using cash through a peer-to-peer exchange. Unlike typical bitcoin wallets, peer-to-peer exchanges work similarly to Craigslist for cryptocurrency, allowing buyers and sellers in the same areas find each other and meet up to trade bitcoins for cash. With peer-to-peer exchanges, it’s important to remember that you are trading high-value currency with strangers you have never met before. If you choose to trade bitcoin in this way, we recommend that you meet buyers and sellers in a public place with high visibility.Best PracticesYour bitcoin exchange and bitcoin wallet do not need to be the same. While most exchanges offer wallets for their users, security is not their primary business. If you do choose to use a wallet offered by an exchange other than Coinbase, we do not recommend that you use that exchange's wallet to store bitcoins in large amounts or for long periods of time. Instead, make your transaction and transfer your bitcoin to a more secure wallet.Step Four: Place Your OrderOne exchange, three steps, and four thousand words later, you’re now ready to buy your first bitcoin. It’s important to keep in mind that although one bitcoin costs several thousand dollars, bitcoin can be divided up to eight decimal points. That means you can buy 1 bitcoin for $3,890, 0.1 bitcoin for $389, or even 0.00000001 bitcoin for $.0000389 if it suits your budget.A Crypto Technology company doubles investments for the investors. Investors makes 100% profit incomes at www.grandcrypto.tech within 7 days of investment and withdraw 100% incomes on the 7th day. And they are secured, reliable with no risk from them.Investing in cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings ("ICOs") is highly risky and speculative, and this article is not a recommendation by Investopedia or the writer to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs. Since each individual's situation is unique, a qualified professional should always be consulted before making any financial decisions. Investopedia makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or timeliness of the information contained herein. As of the date this article was written, the author owns no cryptocurrencies.

Oh hey, I’ve had this happen!The short version is that I just packed up my stuff and left, but if you want the whole story, here you go!When I was in college, I was working days 9–5 (going to school at night and nannying in the morning) at a water/fire mitigation company called Servpro. This is a franchise, and I’m sure some locations are great but mine was not.A couple months prior to this event, the long time (10+ years) office manager who ran the admin department (in charge of creating estimates, billing, accounting, and customer support) had been terminated because she warned the owner he couldn’t afford to buy this huge warehouse we moved to and he was the kind of person who doesn’t want to hear “no”. He replaced her with a lady from his church who was one of those people who thinks managing with fear is the most efficient. From day one she and I clashed, to be fair she was hated by everyone but I didn’t rely on this job to put food on the table for my family so I had the privilege of being able to pushback when she started making detrimental changes to the department (weekends were now required, overtime wasn’t paid, etc).A month or two into her tenure, she came to my desk and told me there was a new cell phone use policy and asked me to sign a form stating I had received it. I signed it, but not trusting her at all, included the date and time in the middle of my signature so that it looked something like this:Christine 04/11/2008 10:15AM ScottAnd made a copy of it “for future reference”. She immediately told me I was terminated and to pack up my desk and leave for violation of the cell phone policy. Now, I had literally *just* signed this so I couldn’t have violated it yet! I sent an email to a work friend outside the company with my personal email CC’d saying I was fired while she went to get me a box for my items.I packed up my stuff while a coworker watched to ensure I didn’t steal anything, went and said a tearful goodbye to my work friends (I may have hated the job, but they were great) while the office manager watched me giggle at the mean things about her they whispered, and left the office. Then I went home and immediately filed for unemployment. The new office manager fought me on it every step, saying I violated the policy and was terminated for that alone. However, once the unemployment office found out she lied to them by sending them a copy of the policy I signed with the date and time whited out while I helpfully sent them the correct version and had the email with the timestamp of my termination showing her version of events was impossible, I was awarded full benefits with the amount retroactively added.This termination set me up to be on the job market at the right time to land my next position which soon had me as the Controller of a $20+ million company at the age of 21. Meanwhile, that Servpro franchise closed for good within the year, because turns out they really couldn’t afford that giant warehouse space.

Gradually expanding comprehensible input.I'll share with you how I was able to learn enough Chinese in 400 hours to win an intermediate-level Chinese speech contest by a landslide. I also became capable of holding hour-long conversations with native speakers on various topics of interest.Learning the CharactersThe first thing I did was start learning the most common characters in Chinese using James Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi (available for both Traditional and Simplified characters). His book teaches an excellent method for remembering the writings and meanings of characters. This was helpful to me because when I learned words later on, I could connect the meanings of the characters within the word and thereby remember it much better.The mnemonic method has you create a mini story or image for each character based on the pieces (called radicals) that comprise it. It's very intuitive and fast, and avoids the boring repetition inherent to traditional methods. There are other books that use the same idea, but I haven't tried them.I didn't learn all 3,000 of the common use characters before working on expanding my vocabulary, but I did learn about 500. 3,000 is probably all you need for the long term, and I'm working towards that number now.Key to this method is the use of spaced repetition software, which immensely reduces the time used for reviewing. I used a free program called Anki (Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards) to review the characters once I had learned them. You can download a lot of pre-made decks with Anki, including some made specifically for use with Remembering the Hanzi. Ideally the card should give you the keyword for a character, you'll write it from your memory of the story, and then you'll tell the program whether you remembered it successfully or not. Reviews become more infrequent the better you do with a particular card, and more frequent if you fail.ShadowingSoon after I started learning the characters, I started shadowing Chinese using the method employed by noted hyperpolyglot Alexander Arguelles. You can see a video of him explaining the method here.For source content, he recommends the Assimil dialogues. However, I actually used a different source for my own shadowing texts: I subscribed to FluentU, a video service for Chinese study, and recorded the audio from various videos. I then transcribed the content of the videos myself in order to have written text as explained in the video above.Although this method did help a lot at first, I will give certain caveats. First, it was very time intensive to prepare the dialogues for the shadowing itself. Second, it doesn't work for everyone. It got me used to speaking Chinese quickly, but it wasn't so helpful after the initial 30 items or so. Try it for ten days and evaluate how helpful it was.Listening & PronunciationFor improving listening skills, I would watch FluentU videos frequently. Unfortunately, this eventually became a bit cumbersome. FluentU's system didn't know how much Chinese I knew already, so in order to update the system I would have to laboriously go through their word learning system and mark words as known over and over again. Since I was learning about 20 words a day, this got old fast. As a result, it didn't know how to prioritize videos for me.For pronunciation, I used the Mimic Method, which teaches pronunciation through songs (rap specifically). You can check it out here: Mandarin Chinese. It was a lot of fun to learn to rap in Mandarin, and it helped my pronunciation a lot.Expanding Vocabulary in ContextIn order to expand my vocabulary so that I could gradually understand more complex native content, I took pieces of content and turned them into cloze deletion flash cards in Anki. Anki has a feature where, when making a flash card, you can just paste a paragraph of text into the card and highlight all the new/unknown words. The program will then automatically generate flash cards for each word. When reviewing them, you'll see a paragraph of text with a blank for the missing word. Your goal is to fill in the blank.My exact process for this was as follows:Take some Chinese content (from a transcribed FluentU video, a piece of text, or the text from one of those podcast sites with short dialogues like Popup Chinese, etc.) and mark all the words you don't know.Look up all the new words and learn them.Put the text into Anki and generate cloze deletion cards.Review the new words and any due from past days.I was able to learn 2700 words using this method. Be careful not to add too many words in a day or you'll quickly become overwhelmed. I suggest starting with 10 each day.Talking With Native SpeakersIt's extremely important that you do this frequently and at length. I included the time I spent with language partners in my time estimate, but I also had a lot of text conversations with Chinese friends on QQ and WeChat.I used iTalki (Learn a language online) to find language tutors and, for a while, talked with someone almost every day. I didn't start until I had a good grasp of about 200-300 words.It was hard to find the most efficient way to practice speaking, but just having conversations was enormously helpful.DifficultiesThere were a number of frustrations that I encountered along the way. First and foremost, very little of the content I encountered was in a format that made it easy to fit into my system. I spent a lot of time (too much) trying to turn FluentU videos into usable text and audio separate from their site. (The audio was often of low quality too). Eventually I gave up on their content (which is still fun to browse, just not optimal for study) and started to use Popup Chinese instead.Another difficulty was the words I studied. At one point, I did a comparison of the words I had learned vs. a list of the most frequent 3,000 words in Chinese. Out of the 2,700 words I had learned, only around 1,000 were among the most frequent 3K! That means I wasted a lot of time learning infrequently used words--and it also means a lot of language teaching services don't concentrate enough on the important words.Other difficulties I had:Finding interesting and useful materialsFinding comprehensible materials (that I understood most of)Making good audio comprehension materialsFinding tutors who taught effectivelyThese frustrations are sadly part of the Chinese-learning landscape. As a result, I've been working with some Chinese writers and voice actors on a new system that resolves all of these difficulties (and more), and will teach Chinese up through advanced levels with a content-rich, story-based system. You can sign up for our email list here if you want to be included in the beta: Learn Mandarin: Learn How To Speak Chinese With Engaging Stories

Here are some I find useful and fun:Instead of "Ctrl, Alt & Del", press "Ctrl, Shift and Escape" to get straight to the task-manager in Windows.If you want to download a Youtube video, just add "ss" to the URL between www. and Youtube.The program DeTune will transfer all of the songs from an iPod/iPhone and put them on you computer.If you search "do the harlem shake" on YouTube the page itself will do the harlem shake.(This one's just for fun)The "Hola Unblocker" extension on Google Chrome will allow you to access to UK version of Netflix; thus unlocking many more shows and movies.Need to focus on studying? Screen Time is an app that lets you limit the time you use on your iphone or ipad. Set the time, press start and when it expires it closes whatever you were doing.If you play YouTube videos through Safari you can still listen to them with your phone's screen turned off.Replace the "en" in a Wikipedia link with "simple" to strip away the complex and mostly irrelevant information on the page.Accidentally erase something you just typed on your iPhone? To undo that, just shake it!1. Go to Google and type in "50 most popular women" 2. Click on the first link 3. Check out #7 xDTo move frame by frame on Youtube, pause the video and then use J or L to go backward or forward respectively.Just in case something caught your attention then I am Rohan Bhatia.You could have gone anyway.

My dad was born in 1931 and spent his career in the computer industry (he was McGill University's first full-time IT person, back in the early 1950s; he later helped program large mainframe computers for IBM). So he's an outlier, maybe. He retired in the 1980s but still uses the computer (a desktop PC) every day. He loves email; it's his primary mode of communication with the family and, I think, the outside world. He also enjoys reading and viewing the news and other content. However, my dad seems deeply distrustful of most internet information sources, and will often follow up with a phone call to verify (for example, hotel reservations or store hours).My dad will also shop on the internet (I taught him this) but won't make online purchases. He will call the company to place his order. And he only looks online for weird stuff he can't find in the stores. He'd never purchase a shirt on Amazon, for example.He uses Craigslist to both buy and sell things.He doesn't trust the internet or email to be secure and private. I am sure there are cookies on his machine, but if he knew about cookies he would delete them with every use.He turns the computer on and off with every use. And, for good measure, unplugs the internet cable (cable internet was another thing I introduced him to; he was still using dialup as of 2005). He originally feared cable because he thought that someone could access his computer while he was away if he had the cable; I convinced him that it would be impossible if he physically disconnected it after each use.My dad also uses Microsoft Word for much of his correspondence, and can use Excel, though I know he still likes to confirm his calculations by hand. Last year he surprised me by doing his taxes on the computer via a downloaded IRS form. That was a new one. He makes cards and signs using Word and supplied Clip Art. This is partially because he is frugal, but it's pretty cool to see an 84-year old use Word (which really sucks as a page layout application) to create something with text and images.Zero use of social media or anything remotely related to that. Thank God is all I can say.

DAZZLING DIVINE DAMSELS AND FLASHING FISH SIGNSவிசும்பு வழங்கு மகளிர் உள்ளும் சிறந்தசெம்மீன் அனையள் நின் தொல் நகர்ச் செல்விAmong the celestial maidens, the chastity and virtueof your wife from the ancient cityagnate with Arundhathi, the red star – Padhitruppathu 31Father henry Heras, a Spanish priest, historian and archeologist was the first to promote the idea of the sign of Indus script as Meen which indicate both fish and star in most of the Dravidian languages. Later eminent experts like Asko parpola, Kamil Zvelebil, Yuri Knorozov and Iravatham Mahadevan endorsed this theory and rei...

Acquiring your first 100k active users is an art, but a messy one—especially if you don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing and paid acquisition. Winnie crossed this important milestone earlier this year, so I wanted to share some insights about how we did it, with a special focus on strategies that work for almost any product and cost no (or very little) money.Grow even before you launchPre-launch startups often run a private beta with friends & family. This is a great practice, but it’s important to make sure that you have some growth mechanism for that beta, whether through invitations or simply making the beta public. Think about it—your goal with a beta is to test the effectiveness of the product, but shouldn’t the ability of that product to grow be one of the most important things to test?Winnie’s private beta grew from 10 to over 400 people in 3 months, driven almost entirely by invitations and personal referrals. Not only was this core group of early adopters extremely helpful to us, they also gave us confidence that this was a product people wanted and would grow on its own.Go big or go homeIt was very tempting to keep Winnie hyperlocal and just focus on one or two markets to start, but that approach cuts you off from a huge number of acquisition channels where you can’t target by locale (most notably for us, the App Stores). It’s also problematic to limit growth when one of the product theses is that it gets better the more people use it.So while we were ramping up for our v1 launch, we made the tough call to launch Winnie everywhere, even in regions where we had almost no data. We gave these users a different onboarding flow, where we allowed them to unlock the product by contributing reviews. And it’s a good thing we did, because Apple featured Winnie on the front page of the App Store immediately after we launched. Without the Early Access flow, we would have been turning those users away at the door; instead, we used the opportunity to bootstrap valuable content.Do run ads — but use them to test value propositionsIt’s very hard to grow if you don’t know how to position your product effectively. Luckily, we have the benefit of self-service advertising platforms — in particular Facebook and Google—to help you very efficiently test ideas and creative with different demographics. With even a very modest spend, you can try a ton of ideas and see what performs the best. This can also give you good data about what people are looking for; in one test we found that people responded especially well to “find places where kids eat free” so we invested in the content and it’s now one of our most popular features.Do the work to get featured by Apple & GoogleApp store featuring is the closest thing we’ve had to “act of God” growth — it can give you a huge influx of new users, but you have little control over when it happens. That said, Winnie has been featured several times in both stores, largely due to the fact that we’ve done the work to make ourselves eligible and attractive for featuring.I could write a whole blog post about how to get the blessings of the app store gods, but here are the high level points:Ignore the siren song of “build once, deploy anywhere” and build native apps that are responsive, stable, and showcase the power of the platform.Both Apple & Google have extremely detailed design and UI guidelines — respect them.Invest in a unique and beautiful app icon, as well as striking promotional art assets.Incorporate platform integrations when you can, for example building in Apple Pay support when Apple is heavily promoting it on the store.Remember that sharing is also about communicationProviding affordance for sharing your content or product is certainly important, but it turns out the way you frame that action can make a big difference in adoption. Early on, we had a Share button on every post, but noticed that it wasn’t getting a lot of usage. Instead, our users were asking us for ways to save posts to revisit later—along with an easy way to share those bookmarks with their spouses and partners.It occured to us that some users may not see themselves as “sharers”, but nearly everyone uses a communication product of some kind to coordinate with friends and family. So we removed the Share button and replaced it with a Save button that then prompts you to share the post. This prompt is framed more around communication than around broadcasting the content, and it worked astonishingly well—social shares shot up over 300%.Always start with demandFrom the very beginning we imagined Winnie as a place where parents could not only connect with one another but with the businesses, service providers, educators and medical professionals that they rely upon to raise their children and care for their families. However, such a vision relies on the successful development of a two-sided ecosystem, an extremely daunting task for any startup with limited resources.We decided to approach this problem by starting with demand — the consumptive audience of parents looking for information — and creating the supply ourselves. Many of our early growth initiatives were actually data acquisition projects, such as creating fully-researched listings for over 5000 daycares and preschools in the Bay Area. This turned out to be a good move, as this valuable data brought on a loyal audience of parents that now organically attracts businesses to provide that content themselves. (For further reading be sure to check out Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory.)Stop optimizing the product for the audience you already haveAs a product designer, one of the things I have to be very disciplined about is not overly focusing on the current iteration of the product. At first, Winnie was a very useful app for parents of babies and toddlers, as it could help you find restaurants with high chairs and parks with changing tables. However, it had very little to offer parents of older children in those early days.We knew that in order for Winnie to work we needed it to be as big as possible, so instead of doubling down on making our app a great changing table finder, we opted instead to build features that unlock new cohorts of users. One example is daycare & preschool search, which brought on a slightly older group of parents with 3 to 5 year olds. Another is topic pages, which allowed us to build relevant content around special interests including teens & pre-teens, blended families, single parents and more.And finally, because no success comes without a little failure, here’s the stuff that didn’t work:In-person marketing events: While these are great for branding and can be a good way to cultivate a sense of community among your users, events are extremely time-consuming. Especially for a team of all engineers, the ROI was almost never worth it for us compared to larger-scale growth projects we could spend our time on.Being mobile-only: This was probably the biggest mistake we made early on. While we correctly sized up our target market (millennial parents) as heavy consumers of apps, when it comes to growth the web is still hugely important. These days the lion’s share of our organic growth comes from web traffic in the form of organic search, social shares and word of mouth. Mobile-first is great. Mobile-only is not.Relying on push notifications alone: Another common mobile-first error here. It’s tempting to think that if you have an app installed on someone’s phone, it will be easy to reactivate them because you can use push to bring them back into the app. However, just because push is an option doesn’t mean you should neglect more traditional channels like email. Email is still very important — don’t neglect it!(Crossposted from How to Get Your First 100k (Active) Users – Winnie)