Worldcoin becomes World and shows new iris-scanning Orb to prove your humanity

Altman came into my awareness because of WorldCoin, and that effort is what made me view him with deep suspicion. It's like he went out of his way to do a very creepy thing in the creepiest possible way.

I wouldn't be happy to use any "identity token" like that, but there's exactly zero chance that I'd be willing to use WorldCoin. I don't think they're anywhere near trustworthy enough as a company, and my trust in Altman is even lower.

If having some kind of identity token becomes nonoptional, then I want it to be run by the government -- they already have my identity information anyway so at least that way my surface area hasn't expanded.

Those articles are very biased eg.

>all it's done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor

I'm a worldcoiner. All that happened is I went to a cafe in London, they took a picture of my eyes without asking to know my name and gave me a Worldcoin account, which is mostly a crypto wallet, associated with that eye scan.

I've since received coins worth about $250 and changed half to usd. I don't feel scammed or exploited and my privacy is invaded a lot less than by the likes of Google and Facebook who know a lot about me rather than just account 555636... has retinas 6gg663gghhs...

I'm not sure database from the bodies of the poor really matches my experience.

Sam didn't create AI - it would have happened anyway.

As to World(coin)s other objectives of providing an anonymous id system and payment network I don't know. Those don't seem to have kicked in in practice although who knows. I think the take up is too low at the moment really.

By the way this has a pic of the new orb thing https://www.pcmag.com/news/sam-altman-worldcoin-launches-dee... and they are now launching their own ethereum L2 and you can write 'mini apps' for it that pop up within the main World(coin) app I think https://minikit-docs.vercel.app/mini-apps

I guess they're optimizing for being impossible to google. Compare "worldcoin privacy issues" vs. "world privacy issues".

but then how will we prove that you aren’t a GPSlop bot?? If you don’t put your eyes in this database we’ll just have to debank you for your own good. Last thing we need is AI bots emptying out people’s bank accounts right?

It doesn't work that way. If you want to steal my worldcoins you need my private key off my phone rather then my eyeballs. The only relevance of the eye scan database is if I try to get more worldcoin accounts the eye scan should show I've already had one and are so not eligible for another. Though I haven't actually tried that yet. Maybe I could get contact lenses with a couple of marks on for that purpose?

That’s an interesting observation, but I think your conclusions are wrong. The reasons for those names (apart from rebranding to change people’s perceptions of the companies) are documented.

Alphabet makes sense because Google has a ton of services with different names, many of them often represented by the first letter in their name.

Meta is for “Metaverse”. Zuckerberg was infamously all in on that idea at the time.

X is a name Musk has obsessed with and tried to push for years, at least since the Paypal days, even naming one of his children with the letter.

World is trying to hide the direct cryptocurrency affiliation (though the coin still exists) as it pivots.

Why settle for three dimensions? With Oracle you can own time itself.

Arasaka Corporation is taking notes... :)

> What's shocking to me is how much people aren't pizza gating these eye scanning orbs

That’s an interesting point. It got me thinking and I think it might be related to the (for lack of a better term) “revolutionary messaging”. What I mean is that conspiracy theorists are guided by a mindset of revolution: It’s always about how the status quo is constructed to fool and control you, thus the truth is by necessity a revolutionary idea known by a select few who must rise up to fight the tyrannical ideas and brainwashing of the world government.

So scammers appeal to that notion. Instead of trying to work with others to enact real change to the systems in place, they hype themselves as lone wolves that are proven right because others disagree with their ideas.

It’s hard to make a conspiracy theory against something which already defines itself by being outside the norm and fighting the status quo. Cryptocurrencies fall squarely in that.

The orb thing is a bit to open to make a good conspiracy theory. I mean you can go to an orb place and check them out - they are really just fancy digital cameras and just take a pic - they don't need your name address phone number or anything. And the biz model is mostly yet another crypto coin which may be a bit scammy but not a very interesting conspiracy.

Now that Gates thing, I find it hard to figure what they are up to.

Because he is a messiah who will create a god, we puny humans will be worshiping. /s

Dunno. He does quite interesting projects- fusion, agi, ubi, world id etc. Also here's a paste from an Atlantic article:

>But Graham had always had intense convictions about Altman. “Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking, ‘Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19,’” Graham once wrote. Altman, too, excelled at making Graham and other powerful people in his orbit happy—a trait that one observer called Altman’s “greatest gift.” As Jessica Livingston, another YC co-founder, would tell The New Yorker in 2016, “There wasn’t a list of who should run YC and Sam at the top. It was just: Sam.” Altman would smile uncontrollably, in a way that Graham had never seen before. “Sam is extremely good at becoming powerful,” Graham said in that same article.

He seems a good deal maker but a bit sneaky and shifty.