Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eagle Cash

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 109 posts

Re: Eagle Cash

#61

Post by ouchjars »

AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #56
gioscarab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word medium comes from latin, its plural is "media", not "mediums".

I’m ESL, how far should the “thou should pluralize a loanword as it was in the original language” rule go? It seems to be not universal. I mean, it’s “hamburgers”, not “die Hamburger”, “robots”, not “roboti”, and “rubles”, not “rubli”/“рубли”.

Borrowed plural forms are most likely to happen with French, Latin, and Greek loans, and also those from languages that don't change words to make them plural, e.g. Japanese and Maori.

Sometimes it happens with other languages, like the use of Hebrew plural rules for cherub/cherubim, but there's the best approximation.

Re: Eagle Cash

#62

Post by lnanek2 »

zapdrive wrote: post #24

With upcoming satellite internet projects (see Starlink), I think it will be highly unlikely to disconnect any army base totally from the internet. In such scenarios, any centralized service would be much more efficient, secure and convenient. Soldiers can also use cryptocurrencies for trade among themselves, without needing to carry cash.

So what about during war when the enemy may have shot down your sats? Your soldiers are still going to want to buy goods on base during their down time and morale will suffer if you just tell them the internet is down.

Re: Eagle Cash

#63

Post by zapdrive »

lnanek2 wrote: post #62
zapdrive wrote: post #24

With upcoming satellite internet projects (see Starlink), I think it will be highly unlikely to disconnect any army base totally from the internet. In such scenarios, any centralized service would be much more efficient, secure and convenient. Soldiers can also use cryptocurrencies for trade among themselves, without needing to carry cash.

So what about during war when the enemy may have shot down your sats? Your soldiers are still going to want to buy goods on base during their down time and morale will suffer if you just tell them the internet is down.

How many will they shoot down? SpaceX is launching them by hundreds every month. The end goal is 45000 satellites. And by shooting just a few, the enemy will maybe only slow down the internet, not turn it off completely.

Let that sink in. They'll need 45000 missiles up shoot down every starlink satellite. Also, SpaceX will definitely be launching new ones as they are being shot down. So it's a very impractical approach.

Re: Eagle Cash

#64

Post by pram »

xedeon wrote: post #27
pram wrote: post #25

Huh. I was in the Air Force from 2005-2010 and I literally never saw this. I was at LSA Anaconda in Iraq too (mentioned in the article) ... must be an Army thing?

It was used in the Air Force as well. It was issued in Basic Training and deployed locations. https://www.dvidshub.net/image/44435/eagle-cash-has-landed-a... https://www.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2000452297/ https://www.afcent.af.mil/Units/332nd-Air-Expeditionary-Wing...

I'm not denying it exists (it's obviously a thing) but when I went through basic, they had us bring a voided check to set up direct deposit. We never had anything like this. Also I used my USAA debit card with zero issues while deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan/Kyrgyzstan. Very strange!

Re: Eagle Cash

#66

Post by jpkoning »

The US military has had some innovative payments ideas.

An occupying force prefers to use a money that 1) doesn't dollarize the nation they are occupying 2) can be tracked, thus thwarting black marketeers 3) is lightweight 4) if they lose, the enemy can't reuse it

Unfortunately, dollar bills are bulky, infiltrate local economies, and aren't enemy-resistant.

So we get innovations like EagleCash, which solves a lot of these problems.

Other payments ideas emanating from the military include Military Payment Certificates (https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2017/04/c-day-and-military-mon...), overstamped currency ( https://twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1343874636480729088) and pogs (http://numispedia.org/AAFES/).

Re: Eagle Cash

#68

Post by alisonkisk »

ForHackernews wrote: post #59

This sounds like a better alternative to bitcoin! I guess it requires a trusted central authority, but for most users that's a feature not a bug, and it sounds like it has a load of advantages: - Faster transactions - Can work "offline" (to some extent) - No wasted energy calculating redundant sha256 - Able to rectify fraudulent transactions

What use case is there for this where it's better than bitcoin?

This is just a local payment system, that's existed for centuries as scrip. ("On a computer" doesn't change the nature of it.)

Centralization undermines the purpose of bitcoin.

Re: Eagle Cash

#69

Post by H8crilA »

ForHackernews wrote: post #59

This sounds like a better alternative to bitcoin! I guess it requires a trusted central authority, but for most users that's a feature not a bug, and it sounds like it has a load of advantages: - Faster transactions - Can work "offline" (to some extent) - No wasted energy calculating redundant sha256 - Able to rectify fraudulent transactions

Lol you just described credit cards.
Post reply on HN