Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 August 27

= August 27 =

How many Bitcoins have
How many Bitcoins have been permanently destroyed or lost? Also, is there a point at which the avg number of bitcoins being created will be overtaken by the average number of bitcoins lost per rate of time? If so, when is that point likely to be? 216.114.215.239 (talk) 00:48, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * There doesn't seem to be any accurate numbers on how many total bitcoins have been lost/destroyed permanently. However, there are many other statistics to be found here. -- .Yellow1996. (ЬMИED¡) 00:58, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * There's no real way to know for sure.
 * This is just how bitcoin works. The wallets (and therefore the coins) have an indefinite "shelf life". They don't need to be connected to the network if they're not being used, and therefore there's no way to count them.
 * There are lots of bitcoins unlocked in the early days that haven't been used recently, you may be able to find stats on that. But there's no way to know if those are lost, or if they're just archived somewhere.
 * You don't even need computerized storage. You can buy physical coins with bitcoin wallets etched onto them. Once the coins are minted there's (supposedly) no computerized record of those wallets left.  APL (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Separate youtube, twitter and google webmaster account
I have a youtube, twitter and a google webmaster account registered under the same gmail address. I would like to give somebody access to the youtube account, but not to the webmaster or twitter account. How can I go about it? bamse (talk) 10:49, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You can give them access to your Google Account, which includes the following services:
 * YouTube
 * Google Webmaster
 * Gmail
 * Google Web History (unless you have disabled it)
 * Google+
 * Google Drive
 * More, but these are the most important ones, really.
 * Your Twitter won't be accessible technically, but if they were malicious, they could easily have a Twitter password reset sent to your Gmail, and log in that way. Essentially, it's a really bad idea to give them your Google login details (needed to log into YouTube). If you want them to upload a video, you could always get them to put it into a Dropbox account, and you could download it from there, and then you upload it to YouTube. drewmunn talk 11:19, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The point is that I want to do all the work concerning youtube, uploading video, adding descriptions (not in my native language), etc. I'd happily change any of the accounts to another login email or set up access restrictions if available (for google analytics I can). From what I see, I cannot change the youtube account email (because of this). With twitter and webmaster tools I am not sure, whether that's possible. Twitter is linked to youtube (new uploads on youtube are twittered) and with webmaster tools I am concerned that if I delete the original owner, or change it for another address, I might lose all my history. bamse (talk) 12:12, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You can't stop access to the other parts of your Google Account, because it's all one thing. It's called a Unified Login, which means by logging into YouTube, the person you are giving your details to will automatically be accessing the other parts of your Google Account (as listed above). You can't change the account it's associated with, because it is the account. You can remove Twitter privileges, so YouTube doesn't post to Twitter, but it's still plausible that the method I've given above could be used to access the Twitter account itself. YouTube isn't designed to use as a cross-collaboration tool except on corporate accounts, which are set up specifically for the purpose of sharing, so no personal data is stored in any part of the account. As you've set up other systems with your Google Account already, the only safe manner in which to do it would be to set up an alternative Google Account (and therefore YouTube account) and share that information. drewmunn talk 12:51, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Which is exactly why I've always thought the whole Google Unified Account thing was a bad idea. You used to be able to log into YouTube by just typing in your account name and password - which would fix this problem because the person with access to your YouTube account wouldn't even need to know what your GMail address was. However, now you can't do that... it's really a shame. -- .Yellow1996. (ЬMИED¡) 16:31, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * But as Astronaut has said below, there's no reason why you still can't create or maintain a seperate account for Youtube (which is basically what you did in the past). It's true the account name will basically need to be an email address so you do need an email for Youtube whether it's a Google one or another but that's hardly a big deal. I can't recall if Youtube used to require an email address but it's hardly an uncommon requirement and if you did add one to Youtube, I'm pretty sure anyone with your login details could easily find out what the email address was. To be fair, maintaining the logins correctly for the different accounts for different services in one browser is slightly annoying but it isn't that bad. The only other thing is if you do want to use a Gmail email for your Youtube but don't want unified accounts, you have to go through a slightly more roundabout way to do that. Whereas in the past you could just associate the email with your Youtube, now since a Gmail address will need to be part of a unified login you will instead need to make the Gmail address you are using for your login forward to your main Gmail address. (Note you can still change the email address, login, account name or whatever you want to call it for the account although you are obviously going to lose any older Gmail email address and any Gmail email associated with it .) To put it a different way, unified accounts may be bad for some, but no one is forcing you to use unified accounts, if you decided to unify in the past then suddenly realise you don't want unified accounts you're SoL, but that's hardly surprising. Nil Einne (talk) 05:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what I do. I registered with YouTube many years ago, and decided to make a new GMail address just for that, luckily; and that's all I use that address for. I have another GMail which I use only for a specific interest of mine, and I only do e-mail with that one (though soon I'll also be using Google Docs.) Then I have a third GMail which is my so-called "professional" e-mail; ie. the one I give out to people in real life if they need to contact me for some reason, or to sign up for something where my real life identity (well, really, just my name and other contact details) should be known (this is rare.) And yes, YouTube always required an e-mail address; though IIRC it didn't have to be with GMail... makes me wonder what happened to all the people who didn't sign up with a GMail address. I wonder if they were forced to switch? Or maybe they get to sit out of this whole Unified Login thing altogether. Though knowing Google they probably would prompt such users repetedly until they switched. -- .Yellow1996. (ЬMИED¡) 17:13, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't give your password to anyone. Why not create a new YouTube account just for them?  Astronaut (talk) 18:38, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the replies. I guess I am SoL then. Quite annoying since for old accounts you can change the youtube e-mail address and in analytics you can reduce the permissions of the registered account to read only at least. I guess I'll have to make a new youtube account, re-upload all videos and move all links from the old account to the new one. Is there any advantage of using unified accounts (besides that I only need to login once)? bamse (talk) 09:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Well that's pretty subjective. Some people prefer the idea of having everything in one place; while others (like me) prefer to keep things separate. Due to being in the latter group, I can't think of any other advantages - though I guess there would also be increased connectivity (data sharing, etc.) between accounts; although that pretty much goes without saying since all the "accounts" are in theory one large account. -- .Yellow1996. (ЬMИED¡) 17:18, 28 August 2013 (UTC)