nomailing

That doesn't make sense. Due to the nature of bitcoin we might actually be able to know where the coins went. what do you mean by nature of Bitcoin? if someone steals yoir wallet, then due to the nature of your physical wallet we will never 100% be certain where it went. Due to the nature of Bitcoin there is a trace left in the blockchain.

I also would like to know that. it is the only real end-to-end encrypted whatsapp alternative. I hope it stays that way.

hard revocation is not at all broken! The article is bullshit.

the revocation check cannot easily get bypassed. if you block the Ca, then the check should definitely fail. this is not the same as saying it is bypassed.

exactly. if access to a CA is blocked it is not good and I want a big red warning sign in my browser. what chrome is doing with their high profile website revocation by browser update is all bullshit.

the problem is that most or almost every professional programmer goes by the slogan "You shouldn't implement cryptography by yourself, but instead rely on the existing well tested libraries". This is hinders competition in the crypto space. You definitely cannot say that the programmers of openSSL are not professionals, because you know that the majority was relying on their library so it is definitely the best library out there. There is just no better alternative. if you want to have alternatives then you have to encourage amateur crypto programmers to implement competing products. But the whole programming community is doing the opposite by bashing people who start implementing their own crypto. For example If I remember the debate about Telegram where a highly talented team starts their own library the response from programmers is that they shouldn't do this and instead use crappy old libraries which do not even fulfill their requirements.

Sure, they are "more democratic than most of the rest of the world". And maybe it is also true that it "got more democratic over the past decades". But if you want to assess the state of something from a more universal and neutral perspective you should define a clear criteria and then assess how well these are satisfied.

If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want. You can verify this easily by looking at some poll results. As soon as there are lobbyists who influence the elected representatives, there is an inequality in the power between different interest groups. This leads to less democratic societies. In our current societies not every citizen can participate equally, therefore these are not democracies. Compare it to a mathematical definition of equality... You cannot say 0.9 is equal to 1 just because it is almost equal. In a direct democracy everyone has almost equal possibilities to participate... In a representative democracy this "almost" get's a little weaker. In a representative democracy with powerful lobbyist groups this "almost" becomes even more weak so that you cannot even call it equal anymore.

So I completely agree when people look at current democracies from an idealistic point of view and say that they are not really democracies. My personal opinion is that a much more ideal democratic society is actually possible with the advances in IT. Direct democratic participation could be possible using end-to-end auditable voting systems with cryptographic methods.

It's hard to logically argue about morality. I personally think that we have a moral responsibility for future generations. some people would say that we have a moral responsibility for preservation of plant species. In this sense of couse preservation of the human species is also a matter of morality. If you only count morality as something towards organisms that do live and can feel pain, then it makes no sense to eat meat. But actually most people eat meat. So you see there are many different moral standards.

a recording from a binaural head cannot account for the different shapes of pinnae that humans have. The outer ear of humans are shaped quite differently. So each ear has his own transfer function which not only depends on frequency but also on the direction of the sound.

Just look at the exponentially rising number of bitcoin ATMs which are currently deplyed around the world. So your argument somehow shows that the comparisons with the early internet actually makes sense. Because at these early times people argued exactly by assuming that there is no network growth. So in the early 90th most people had the opinion that the internet is useless because there are only a few connected computers. Don't underestimate network effects and exponential growth.

Of course nobody knows at the current point where this is going. But you also cannot make arguments ibn which you are assuming there is no growth. Of course the price could go up or down but it is really hard to imagine that it would go to zero.

I have no statistics about it, but I personally think that most people who are once in possesion of some bitcoins will not sell them all, but will always keep a few of them. So the growth measured in number of users seems to only increase. I would consider a net decrease in the number of users as very unlikely as long as there is not a better technologically advanced replacement for it.

Do you think it is that easy for a simple farmer to check if their seed is contaminated? I think the article makes a good point, that it is the responsibility of Monsanto to make sure that their seeds do not spread. But I am no expert.

But compare it to a corporation that has a patent on some computer code which would distribute itself as a worm and every victim with an infected PC has to pay to the corporation. Only because you have it on your PC does not make you a copyright pirate. There must be clear evidence that you downloaded patented software willingly. So it is Monsanto who has to make sure that the farmers have the tools to prevent Monsanto seeds from growing. If these tools are not freely available I would say farmers should not be liable this.

what's your problem with bitcoin? maybe you just have to accept that a lot of the HN and crypto audience is interested in bitcoin.

this is exactly why I would only donaze anonymously using Bitcoin.

Do you know about liquid Feedback, which is used by the pirate Party? Or liquid democracy in general? I think they might be very interesting for you if you haven't heard of them yet.

Why not with a Browser plugin? Pidgin already Supports OTR via gtalk. And on Android you can use Gitterbot. Google should really implement OTR in a Javascript library in the Client Browser. Would that be possible?

Why do you think that they are not used in commercial systems? As far as I remember from leckeres of Geoffrey Hinton they are now used quite extensively in speech recognition systems on smartphones, etc.