>> Because the creator of crypto concept never understood why there are centralized institutions in the first place.
You are totally missing the point. Having to rely upon central banks was the fundamental problem being solved.
> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
-Satoshi Nakamoto [0]
Getting central banks out of the picture is original philosophical motivation for developing a digital currency. All of the "cashless society" convenience aspects are secondary features. Everything that follows, regarding ledgers/records/blockchain/double-spending/trust-less is what's needed to make a digital currency work without a centralized authorities that mint money and validate transactions.
> A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990's. I hope it's obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we're trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.
-Satoshi Nakamoto [1]
Next up, the irreversibility of transactions is a feature, not a bug.
> For many purposes, reversal and arbitration is highly desirable, but there is no way anyone can compete with the arbitration provided by Visa and Mastercard, for they have network effects on their side, and they do a really good job of arbitration, at which they have vast experience, accumulated skills, wisdom, and good repute. So any new networked transaction system has to target the demand for final and irreversible transactions. [2]
> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
Replace "bank" with "cryptocurrency exchange" and the quote still applies verbatim.
I think there is a misapprehension in the original bitcoin design about the "root problem." is the root problem debt? is the root problem globalization? is the root problem capitalism? is the root problem fractional reserve banking? is the root problem mechanisms of governance? is the root problem human neurological wiring and our inability to find stable cooperative regimes that are not disrupted periodically by anti-social violence?
I identify many more pressing problems than than central banks, and trying to eliminate trust as a requirement is a naive and anti-social approach.
despite the fundamental conceptual limitations of bitcoin, its genius is its memetic tendency to coopt human social dynamics and create a whirlwind of FOMO and greed. It actually highlights what our actual problems as a global society are, and less trust is not the answer.
I personally would start from a different point of view. Given that privacy is impossible, and it is futile to try to support the illusion that the world is a limitless and open system, we should double down on trust, and create systems that make it easier to discriminate between actors as more or less trusted, and which improve our ability to reach consensus and maintain it. Systems which make trust more secure.
unfortunately these solutions are unlikely to be embedded in computer networks, but in my opinion will arise from genetic engineering.
Men can get a vasectomy, if they are 100% sure they don't want kids, ever.
Women can get a copper IUD with no hormonal side effects inserted in a few minutes and will be protected against pregnancy for up to 10 years (or can opt to have it removed at any time).
If pregnancy occurs, women can just order pills online [0] that will stop it (as long as they detect it in the early stages). Men have no control in the matter. If a woman decides to go forth with a pregnancy against the man's will, he can either abandon his child and have his wages garnished for 18 years, or accept his new situation and become a father.
To be clear, I think the idea that a woman's partner should have any control over whether she gets an abortion is absurd. But women clearly have the advantage when it comes to reproductive choices right now. I hope male birth control pills can help change that.
African kids don't cause as much pollution as Europeans and Americans do. By orders of magnitude.
However yes in the long term we should not keep growing our world population as a whole. I do understand the need for Africans to have more kids though. For two reasons: A lot more of them die due to poor living conditions, and they serve as a "pension" for the parents.
Obviously these concerns will be solved by better living conditions.
Too many people have let their vision become consumed by the fact that Trump was an insufferable asshole. A nuanced discussion can be had about his time in office and his actual actions, without giving undue weight to the shit that comes out of the man's mouth. Just as an example of something most democrats would applaud, he signed an executive order to keep federal unemployment assistance flowing, while congress was happy to keep bickering and holding millions of Americans hostage. I'm not trying to break down the man's presidency here, but I would say that this provided more good to the average American, in a time of great need, than anything any recent president had done.
I do feel compelled to mention the following in regard to the comparison with Bush. The man, Cheney's puppet as he was, started an illegal war that killed a few hundred thousand people. Using the intelligence apparatus to manipulate Congress and the American people, in my view, is much worse than anything Trump had done. Same with enabling the domestic spying apparatus with the Patriot Act. If that's not undermining our institutions, I don't know what is.
I guess I should preempt the obvious counter argument about Trump's allegation that the election was stolen. The Democrats did the same exact thing with Russiagate. Both in terms of the accusation and pursuing it through legal channels, all based on fictional evidence to boot.
We should not allow us to miss the bigger picture while falling for the manufacrured distraction of "my party vs their party." But rather look to understand the special interests that are amplifying our division, and benefitting from it.
> The Democrats did the same exact thing with Russiagate. Both in terms of the accusation and pursuing it through legal channels, all based on fictional evidence to boot.
It’s incredible that this is still being parroted even after the Russian invasion. Go and read at the actual Muller report and Senate Intel report vol 5. The findings of the us senate and special counsel are that Russia hacked the 2016 election with the intent of helping Trump, and the Trump campaign worked willingly with them on this effort and lied about it to everyone.
Most notably, Trump’s campaign manager was sharing internal campaign data with a Russian Intel officer, who transmitted the data to the GRU. This is the collusion we had all claimed was happening, and it was found. Calling this a hoax at this point is willingly spreading Russian disinformation. This is the position of Vladimir Putin, that Russian interference in 2016 was a hoax. Think about that, as he bombs and targets civilians. Why are you still carrying their water for them on this front? What if, actually, after all these years, you are wrong about that? What evidence would it take to change your mind?
Let me ask you this, as you say the Russian scandal was based on fictional evidence, how many pages of the Mueller report and Senate Intel report have you personally actually read?
Here’s their bottom line:
It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.
Trump and his associates participated and enabled hacking of his rivals in 2016. Russian collusion. Republicans authored that report, btw. What’s your position on the 2016 election after reading that?
I think it’s too soon to make an assessment. Trump spent his whole presidency casting aspersions on NATO, and tried to cut defense aid to Ukraine. If this situation escalates further, he may be viewed as a James Buchanan figure.
And I do think things may get worse. Currently a sovereign country is being invaded and civilians are being targeted. The second order effects might be even worse
* If Russia pulls resources from Syria then the civil war might come to a head. The regime leans heavily on Russian air support
* Russian paramilitary provides defense for unpopular governments like Tanzania’s. If they got pulled these countries might go into civil war
* Ukraine and Russia are two of the worlds largest exporters of grain. Countries like Egypt are big importers (Egypt actually subsidizes the purchases heavily). If grain costs go up (and other commodities like oil) this could cause unrest
* Nuclear war
* Cyber war targeting key infrastructure. The possibility of massive collateral damage is high (see Not Petya)
Some of these things are not intrinsically bad (I have no love for despotic governments for example) but the potential sum total of events could throw the world into chaos.
The War on Terror was a massive mistake. America needs to keep the crazy evangelicals who want to bring on the end times by attacking the Middle East far from the oval office. But taking on an isolationist position in response to the 2000’s would be a massive mistake. It’s clearer than ever that power vacuums have to be filled
Chrome loves to eat huge chunks of available CPU on my MacBook while watching YouTube videos. I use ublock origin so my fans are basically never running otherwise, even on other streaming platforms. Netflix does tend to run the fans continuously, but at a very quiet, low rate.
This machine is ooold so having the fans run at max always makes me nervous. This never happens in firefox. I've talked to friends on relatively new MacBooks and they all run into the same issue with Chrome + YouTube.
Anyone know what the he'll Chrome is up to with this?
I have been in this situation myself, but my former boss has a conscience, as it turned out. My wife and I were on a vacation that was timed to celebrate an important birthday. I had spend days during the preceeding week training up two people on my team, and maybe one or two others, on various processes and contingencies. Yet still, when push came to shove, I was asked to get online to put out a fire. Luckily it only took an hour or two. A few days later I was surprised to find $1000 bucks deposited into my account from my boss as a thank you.
This system that I had hacked together, built out and maintained, kept on growing in size, complexity, attributable revenue and potential compliance liabilities. Within the year, I had to call the execs into a meeting to drive home the point that this wasn't a tenable way for us to operate. Everyone had known as much but it was still a tough pill to swallow. I let them get too spoiled at a huge cost to my own mental health.
I had to paint a dire picture to make my case that the system had to be rebuilt from scratch in order to be integrated into the main infrastructure. I ended up leaving a few months later as the rebuild was nearing completion. A couple of months down the road I was surprised to learn that they were still using a part of my system alongside the rebuild. Apparently their architecture couldn't support an algorithm that this component had relied on.
Just a wild guess, but it may have something to do with the federal government having the sole power to regulate interstate commerce. Which makes me wonder if weed sold in a state has to be grown in that state.
Which leads to deforestation, the depletion of ground water supplies and still produces CO2 on both then front end and back end. Renewables aren't interesting just because they are renewable. We're not going to run out of fossils today so burning something else instead makes no sense. Especially when it becomes a form of geewnwashing to cover for a lack of progress in wind and solar.
The car beeps and by the time the driver returns to earth and figures out what the fuck is going on, it will almost certainly be too late.
What you're really asking for is a car that predicts when it needs to beep. I'd imagine that in most of the serious situations, the maximum warning time will be shorter than the minimum spaced-out driver reorientation time. In fact, no meaningful scenario comes to mind where the car would want help but with a handful of seconds to spare.
You are totally missing the point. Having to rely upon central banks was the fundamental problem being solved.
> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.
-Satoshi Nakamoto [0]
Getting central banks out of the picture is original philosophical motivation for developing a digital currency. All of the "cashless society" convenience aspects are secondary features. Everything that follows, regarding ledgers/records/blockchain/double-spending/trust-less is what's needed to make a digital currency work without a centralized authorities that mint money and validate transactions.
> A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990's. I hope it's obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we're trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.
-Satoshi Nakamoto [1]
Next up, the irreversibility of transactions is a feature, not a bug.
> For many purposes, reversal and arbitration is highly desirable, but there is no way anyone can compete with the arbitration provided by Visa and Mastercard, for they have network effects on their side, and they do a really good job of arbitration, at which they have vast experience, accumulated skills, wisdom, and good repute. So any new networked transaction system has to target the demand for final and irreversible transactions. [2]
[0] http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...
[1] http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...
[2] https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/th...