null0pointer

Brilliant! The downsides of both crypto and centralized control! Just use Monero instead.

I’m on good terms with myself.

This is pretty much my view as well. I’m dreading this near future.

I can't read the whole article but from the first couple of paragraphs it sounds like ByteDance are using ChatGPT output to improve their own models. So the verge is upset that ByteDance are scraping a resource available on the internet to improve their models... the same thing OpenAI did to get their own training data? They call out that they're breaking the ToS but if OpenAI or Microsoft didn't ban their account yet then so what? Are the verge the ToS police now? Seems like a nothing story.

They use it because it provides an air of authority when the "person familiar with the matter" could be literally anyone.

You’ve struck on an interesting problem in decentralized systems, Sybil attacks [0]. How do you prevent someone from registering multiple accounts and pretending to be multiple people? In Bitcoin, and other cryptos, the problem is ignored because it doesn’t matter at the address level since you have the same amount of bitcoin no matter how many addresses it’s split between. However, in other systems within the crypto-ecosystem it may be desirable to establish a 1:1 human:account ratio. This is exactly what Sam Altman was/is trying to solve with his WorldCoin thing which also uses biometrics (I’d personally not sign up for WorldCoin and advise against it for others). Largely it remains an unsolved problem AFAIK.

Jumping back to banking the homeless, I mentioned in the previous comment that if criminals tried to use these small accounts to launder money it should be relatively easily detectable by the banks. I would add that I don’t think it’s a problem if a given homeless person opens N of these accounts for small values of N since that would still be a small total cashflow volume. The main things I’m interested in with such a scheme would be allowing homeless people to have somewhere to store what little money they have without risk of having it robbed from them [1], allowing them to have a normal way to get paid from any job they might work, and allowing them to purchase things online (perhaps delivered to an Amazon locker or other pickup location). I’m not saying this idea is perfect, it certainly isn’t, but my point in the previous comment was that there are people who are underserved by the existing banking infrastructure.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

1: They could authenticate with an account number or card and a PIN at an ATM. Here opening multiple accounts would be an advantage for the security conscious because they could open a duress account and put a fraction of their money in it to withdraw if they were ever forced to by a robber.

This comment was marked [dead] when I read it. I vouched it back into visibility. I wish people would respond with a comment if they disagree, rather than reporting it.

Meta-comment aside, there’s another population segment who suffer from overbearing AML/KYC regulations - homeless people. Many homeless people do not have any form of ID and hence cannot open a bank account. What option do they have? I would argue for low value accounts, say <$5000 annual transaction volume, AML/KYC enforcement should not be required. $5000 is such a small amount in the grand scheme of money laundering that the government should really focus on the bigger fish. Splitting your laundered money into many bank accounts would, or could, fall under existing structuring laws and would be easily detectable by any bank.

I haven’t even mentioned that in many countries, such as the US, you have absolutely no guaranteed right to banking access. Your access to banking can be shut off overnight by any one of the various middle men involved. Until these things are solved, and legal persons can be guaranteed access to banking then crypto is necessary.

Right, I’ve noticed this trend too. It sucks and I find myself frustrated by how easily people go along with smooth talking sales/business types and allow them to take over positions of power. The truth is that builders can exist and build amazing products without the sales guys, but the sales guys would have absolutely nothing without the builders. I’d even go a step further and say that the best products are built by solo or small teams of impassioned builders and as soon as sales/business types get involved things start tending towards enshittification.

The sad part is that nearly 100% of investment and resources will follow the big-profit group leaving the altruistic-mission guys in the dust with no resources and no money.

The link above is likely trustworthy but people should NOT put their wallet details into random websites.

Won’t this just incentivize people to not get tested for sleep apnea, thus reducing the overall quality of life and ability of people in Maryland?

As someone who has been into crypto for a similar amount of time I can confirm that this analysis of the state of the crypto landscape is accurate.

The difference is that dang is one of the rare mods that’s actually paid for the work. I assume this means it’s a job to him, rather than a means to satisfy some desire for power and control.

Thank you! I’ve been thinking this for a while but hadn’t quite found the right way to articulate it.

How much of a corporate real estate portfolio do they have?

I feel like the available data is way too scarce to attribute positive results to any individual executive with any degree of statistical significance. Do you know if there’s been research done on this?

My perception is that it’s really really hard to differentiate between someone who’s genuinely a force to be reckoned with and someone who’s just in the right place at the right time. After their first success they can hop around between companies from executive role to executive role playing it safe and riding the gravy train just by not fucking it up. I’d be interested if anyone can provide examples of executives that consistently trigger inflections in a company’s performance within say 2 years of joining across multiple companies. I’m genuinely curious.

> Actual gender change operations aren’t even done until adulthood

This seems to be false according to this article [1] which claims that “In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims.”

1: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-tran...

It’s not about the kids. It’s never about the kids.

I went to a FAANG at a similar point in my career to where you are now. More than tripled my pay. I firmly believe that any dev can get in if they practice enough leetcode problems. We are not special. I say go for it if you want it.

I find it insane that they chose to reveal their real identities. Despite building a tool ostensibly for preserving privacy they were extremely negligent about their own. They must be incredibly naive to think they wouldn't immediately be under intense scrutiny from LEOs.

I also find it insane that they had investors (who somehow remain unnamed and uncharged???).

I don’t understand why ENS doesn’t support normal record types (A, AAAA, etc.) Support for these was in the original design for ENS. I hope we see more support for alternative roots in the future. Brave browser, which is already fairly crypto-friendly, could add an ENS resolver for example. Maybe this is something someone could build as a browser extension?

> we just want to verify if a visitor is faking their device or user agent

What does it mean to fake a device or user agent? Their intent is probably devices and user agents who say they’re one thing but are actually another. But browsers have been lying about who they are for decades. And what’s the difference between a fake device/UA and an unusual device/UA? Probably none, as far as they’re concerned.

Ok let me know when there’s an OS or browser that’s totally secure. Attestation does not prove that a device meets any security bar. And likewise lack of attestation does not prove that a device does not meet a security bar. Attestation merely shows that a device has been “allowed”. You might argue that all devices with attestation have been audited for security so at least that provides some standard. How well did audits work in the past for things like mortgage backed securities in 2008? No, it doesn’t provide any guarantee other than the power that be are empowered to grant themselves and their friends privileged status while leaving everybody else without a device that can run the software they want.

Thanks for the clarification.

The parent of the comment you’re replying to literally cites a case where they were deemed to be wrong.

Secure digital transfer of value without a trusted intermediary is a legitimate use case.

This law will require Meta to pay news companies "for posting their journalism on their platforms". What is the intent behind the law?

> "If the government can't stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?" said Rodriguez.

How is this "stand[ing] up for Canadians"? More like standing up for news corps. The framing of the response from Meta by Trudeau as "bullying tactics" is a bit irritating. I'd expect Meta's experiments with blocking news to be checking whether the new costs mean it's still worth for them to post news or now. I still don't really understand what the purpose of this law is.

I've noticed some humans are willing to argue without giving up too. Sometimes online arguments follow a pattern where each response is longer than the last until one person decides it's not worth their time to continue the argument. In my head I've called this "argument by attrition".

Right, we already live in a post-truth world where it's politicians and journalists who omit or twist facts to support their agenda. It's not just politicians and journalists who do this, but they tend to have the most reach and influence on average.

Wouldn’t expect any less from a reddit mod tbh.