I was hoping this would happen. It will probably become a EU thing now.
The idea of a privately controlled currency needs to die quickly. Never been a fan of crypto currency in general but Bitcoin, and the like, are accepted because they are not centralized. Your Bitcoin won't change in value or disappear because your country and another get in a fight.
I'm quite fond of the idea of a decentralized currency that nobody has the ability to actively control becoming popular. That would act as a hedge against abuse of power by both governments and corporations.
A currency used worldwide, controlled by a corporation, and under the influence of the US government would be the exact opposite, and is not a thing I want to see succeed.
A really powerful entity, let's say Facebook, or the US government would find it difficult to do any of these with Bitcoin (used as the example because it's well-known):
* Alter the monetary policy significantly
* Prevent a specific person, organization, or country from using the currency
* Prevent the use of the currency for specific goods or services
That doesn't make using Bitcoin a magic bullet to be free from the influence of the US government even if its popularity and monetary policy were appropriate for widespread use as a currency, but it raises the difficulty level versus influencing someone who's doing business in USD.
>I'm quite fond of the idea of a decentralized currency that nobody has the ability to actively control becoming popular. That would act as a hedge against abuse of power by both governments and corporations.
Precisely what Satoshi Nakamoto cited as his motivations when introducing bitcoin on the p2pfoundation forums.
>A currency used worldwide, controlled by a corporation, and under the influence of the US government would be the exact opposite, and is not a thing I want to see succeed.
Completely agreed. The U.S. has been using any reach it has into other countries to push its very peculiar cultural viewpoints into countries that don't want them but need fair access to finance capital.
There are lots of privately controlled currencies. Miles, points, certificates, game gold, etc. - they are all private currencies. Most of them aren't legal tender, but neither are cryptocurrencies. The only difference between facebook-coin and miles is that Facebook promises to encourage dealing in their coin and airline would frown on that. Not much difference otherwise. You have some tokens that you can exchange for things of value in some places.
> Your Bitcoin won't change in value or disappear because your country and another get in a fight
If one of them decides that banning bitcoin would serve their interests - it will get banned. You, of course, could work around it - as people do for centuries with drugs, guns and ideas proscribed by governments - but then you'd have to suffer the consequences when you're caught. Yes, when, because if you live in government's jurisdiction and they have interest in getting to you, they will.
> Facebook promises to encourage dealing in their coin and airline would frown on that. Not much difference otherwise.
Not much difference except it is controlled by one of the most powerful, and richest companies on the planet, with the most data on everyone, ever compiled. That if you are a member, knows you likes, dislikes, politics, sexual preferences, entire social network, where you live, when you get home, where you go, whether or not your like your friends. That has a bigger market cap than the annual GDP of small countries, that competes in local marketplaces, could easily take on and possibly wipe out craigslist, ebay, and more, and could conceivably beat entire national currencies in capitalization, reserves, convenience, and ease of use, thus supplanting the currency of entire small nations.
Yeah, pretty much the same thing as airline miles.
In your exercise in sarcasm you did almost everything except one thing - you somehow forgot to point out where the difference is. Yes, Facebook has a lot of data. And so? How that makes Facebook issuing crypto-tokens dangerous? If you consider the data volume Facebook has a problem, what does this have to do with the currency?
> There are lots of privately controlled currencies. Miles, points, certificates, game gold, etc.
Yes but these other currencies don’t have the possibility to be the most used and powerful currency for everything you do, and who knows what shape, direction and impact Libra will take/have over time once that Pandora’s box is opened!
> Yes but these other currencies don’t have the possibility to be the most used and powerful currency for everything you do
Why not? There's possibility that everybody would start flying around so much that United airlines miles would be so valuable that people would volunteer to be beaten up just to get a chance for getting some. This is a very remote possibility, but nothing in the laws of nature or laws of men preclude it, so it's a possibility. Facebook currency, which doesn't even exist, has roughly the same chance to match this description as United miles. But somehow United miles is fine but Facebook currency is Pandora's box. Note that Bitcoin is not pandora's box, Ethereum is not, Monero is not, 9000 cryptos that nobody can even count, let alone track, is not, but most white collar, buttoned down, corporate vanilla safe cryptocurrency that have ever been proposed, the most soft target, which would be the easiest thing in the world to track and regulate ever in crypto history - that one is the Pandora box! How does it even make a little bit of sense to you?
> The only difference between facebook-coin and miles is that Facebook promises to encourage dealing in their coin and airline would frown on that. Not much difference otherwise.
I mean there is the tiny difference that one of these is the biggest social network megacorporation on the planet with the power and will to heavily influence a user base larger than France and Germany combined, but otherwise, yeah.
Nobody wants Facebook to have that power, even if they hadn't screwed over their users multiple times and seem to be devoid of scruples, they haven't even existed long enough to demonstrate deserving that kind of trust.
The difference is that those other are not meant to be used as a money replacement. In Pokemon Go there are coins and they are nothing but points to spend in store.
If I could transfer them to other player, become a certified shop that accept payment with them, or do any of the many other thing you can do with money that would be probably a legally grey area.
(moreover I am not sure how you would tax such a currency)
You don't tax currency, you tax transactions. And you tax transactions based on the value of the transaction. So if I sell a widget for either $10 or 0.01 BTC, and the tax rate is 10% of the value of the transaction, then I'll have to pay $1 in tax for either of the transactions. If I sell a widget for 0.01 BTC and no other amount, then we can establish the value of the widget from other sources, for instance, someone else might sell the widget for around $10 (implying that it the tax is around $1) or someone else might exchange 1 BTC for $2000 (implying a the tax is around $2). Naturally, if you put the decision of the tax into the hands of the government, they'll take the best rate for themselves. You can avoid this by pricing things in terms of the tax rate i.e. using the government's currency.
> The difference is that those other are not meant to be used as a money replacement
That'd be a big surprise for me when I'll try to book my next flight with miles. I certainly thought they'd replace money.
> In Pokemon Go there are coins and they are nothing but points to spend in store.
That's literally definition of money - abstract points that you can spend in the store. Well, the definition of fiat money, to be precise, but we're not going back to gold doubloons anytime soon.
> that would be probably a legally grey area.
Transferring money to other person can certainly land you in legal gray area if it against the laws (money laundering, tax avoidance, fraud, etc.) So what's new here?
> (moreover I am not sure how you would tax such a currency)
The same way you tax any other goods. If you receive income, you are taxed on its value. You think if non-USD payments weren't taxed, nobody would have a bright idea to be paid is silver bullion? IRS is not stupid, you owe taxes on any income, and better believe it, if they don't know the exact value proving it to them will very soon become your problem, not theirs.
>> In Pokemon Go there are coins and they are nothing but points to spend in store.
>That's literally definition of money - abstract points that you can spend in the store.
Better move all my savings to pokécoins then, I am sure they can then be used for money replacement.
Jokes aside there are innumerable difference between real money and an in-game credit both from practical and legal viewpoint.
> That'd be a big surprise for me when I'll try to book my next flight with miles. I certainly thought they'd replace money.
Again credit with a company of a consortium is incomparable to money with a legal standing.
What libra tries to do here is to create a new worldwide concurrency that can in principle subsume most national currencies in the world (maybe except the dollar for technical reasons).
But it could if some folks on the bitcoin team fight with others. Bitcoin is still controlled by humans and thus, not a replacement for traditional fiat currencies.
If you want a currency to be spent, it can't increase in value. That's the kind of thing you hold onto -- a store of value.
There's numbers.. Systems using missiles can be zerged with disposable decoy drones until they have no ammo or tricked if using thermal tracking. Gun based ones can have a hard time tracking/predicting if the drones randomize movement around their attack vector and/or randomize speed.
The environment and the approach will matter as well. They come in low, tracing the terrain or snaking through it, will make keeping lock hard. What if it's rush hours and they come in just above car height along a crowded street.
Then, of course, you can just have them semi-adapt. If they see a bunch of explosions in the air around them maybe switch to pre-programmed mission #2?
Defending against drone swarms is going to be tricky. Here they only had a few low tech ones and had a significant impact. I wonder how one would go about designing a system that should go for a target but be in no rush to get there though..
Ha!, yes, what does it mean to understand something? To fully understand an apple you must fully understand the entire evolution of the universe, where it came from and down the rabbit hole we go :)
Still, chasing understanding is useful as every now and then something jumps out of the rabbit hole and changes things... Trying to understand the revolutions of the celestial spheres, why black bodies don't emit endless amounts of energy or what it would be like to travel at the speed of light.
I like David Sinclair's idea that while DNA can be considered digital data, copying it is an analog process and we end up with copies of copies of copies, each a little worse than the previous one, while DNA is still intact.
It sounds too simple to be true, but it's an interesting information theoretical based hypothesis.
In my case 500/500 fiber @ ~$40-45/month, somewhere around $20-25/month for 100/50 4G and something like $60-65 for 1000/1000 fiber. Semi-rural areas are usually not far behind.
With neighborhood deals you can push those prices a bit.
Most (major) train lines have fiber buried next to them that is leased by the various telecoms which helped the expansion.
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Looked it up and a rural town in the southern parts where I used to live offers 1000/1000 from 5 different ISP's who are apparently fighting. They've all lowered prices recently, cheapest is at ~$30/month.
Most (major) train lines have fiber buried next to them that is leased by the various telecoms which helped the expansion.
Yes indeed. Most people don't know that. Here's a little piece of related trivia:
Long before wireless was a thing, people wanted to bypass the AT&T long distance voice telecom monopoly. Actually, long before voice communications were a thing, people wanted to send telegrams.
Hmmm ... as you note, there are train lines all over. Perfect for right of way to run telegraph wires, and eventually to run long distance fiber.
A relatively modern name arising from that: Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications
Well, I do see a lot of potential problems with law enforced using ghettos as an "arrest shop" and the like but that's not really on the technology or your company. In general it's seems like a good thing, nobody wants unresponsive people zipping around in +1 tonne metal boxes.
I'm curious about the "similarly impairing dose" though. Any good research, actual test results, etc?
I'm assuming it's response times which make me curious how the response time of a 25 year old post 3 hour cannabis smoker compares to a +70 year old on a regular day and how that compares to someone at the legal limit for alcohol.
Impairment is the big question surrounding the enforcement of driving under the impairment of cannabis. It varies much more than alcohol based on BMI, age, and use history. Here are a few good resources for understanding cannabis impairment and how it compares to alcohol.
Right, so slap the largest fine on each one. They had 2 years to prepare and obviously didn't.
Before the GDPR this would have been stamped "identity theft" putting the company in the clear. As if you were somehow responsible for the company not verifying the identity of their customers.
[Edit]
I should mention that around here there is an established 2FA solution used by banks and the government so verification has been de facto standardized.
It's a common thing among adults across the globe though. Well, "imaginary friend" might be pushing it but lots of people let imaginary entities help them understand the world and find their place in it. It would be interesting to see how the two compare.
What will the certification process for the next plane from Boeing look like?
The FAA certified a plane that had obvious flaws. From what I understand they out sourced the certification process to Boeing but that doesn't remove their responsibility, it's still their "stamp". The real certification process started after the accidents and only needed a few weeks to find additional flaws. I'd assume the process is normally months long so "a few weeks" would be finding it early.
But why should I trust the FAA? They seem to be working hard now projecting an image of a for-the-people agency while throwing as much dirt as they can on Boeing but I haven't really seen anything addressing their own problems with out sourcing, corruption, and political interference.
Canada and the EU have already lost trust in the FAA. They're going to certify the Max and probably other planes more independently now.
As a consumer, I'm happy to have more oversight on the planes.
As a Boeing shareholder, I'd be pissed the company demolished the trust that allowed for a lot of cost savings during the certification phase.
Time and time again, we see that companies are terrible at self-regulation. They'll abuse it to save pennies today at the cost of dollars and lives tomorrow.
What happens most of the time with the big companies (Boeing, Cessna, Bombardier...) is that it is cheaper to have an in-house DER (Designated Engineering Representative) for the part of the aircraft that they are certifying. DERs themselves
You have Mechanical DERs, Electrical DERs, Software DERs, and others.
A good example for the HN crowd, the Software DER. Per regulations, the software standard is the DO-178B. The DER isn't actually spinning up the dev environment, or building the piece of software used; just checking to make sure the process was followed. (the dev environment was documented, what dependancies...) These people are a step up from code reviewers and just check paperwork more than software.
The FAA itself isn't concerned with safety; it is just there to make sure there is a papertrail to follow in the event of a safety issue.
I think that's a rewriting of the role of the FAA. A papertrail is a strong prerequisite to being able to adequately review the safety of an aircraft. Without strict conformance to both complete written instructions on how to build, assemble, and configure an aircraft, how would one ever know a plane, no matter how many tests you do is the same design that is later flown vs what was certified?
BTW when the plan was floated to let Boeing self certify more in the process, in the name of 'efficiency' there were objections made to the political appointees driving that.
> Canada and the European Union say they are re-examining the approval it gave Boeing 737 MAX jets, following reports of a U.S. investigation into the Federal Aviation Administration certification of the aircraft.
This is an excellent point. FAA says it's too arduous to certify these planes, so they let Boeing do it. But, after some people die, the magically have the ability and capacity to do it?
The idea of a privately controlled currency needs to die quickly. Never been a fan of crypto currency in general but Bitcoin, and the like, are accepted because they are not centralized. Your Bitcoin won't change in value or disappear because your country and another get in a fight.