That's not what happened here. What happened is that the crypto company said, "Follow this contract," and their customer followed the contract and took their money, and then the crypto company was like, "But not like that!"

Ostensibly, the whole point of cryptocurrencies is to decentralize financial control and not depend on governments for that service. If you then depend on governments the second you don't like what happens, there's no point to cryptocurrencies.

I have to admit, that's pretty funny. But I will point out that you did not make an argument in support of your position; you merely insulted me.

If you see a case where someone exploits a badly-coded computer program to take a hundred million dollars from someone, refuses to return any of it (even when offered several million dollars for their trouble), refuses to co-operate with the judges and the rest of civilised society, and just see "waa waa baby doesn't like his medicine" then I don't see how to actually reason with you. That's just a value difference, not really an insult.

I think you overestimate how easy it is to distinguish between these two. A reasonable common example is people like Bernard Marantelli exploiting lotteries. The lottery does not intend for people to play as Marantelli does. You can (and people do) argue that he's stealing money, but should he go to jail for playing the lottery in a way "not intended by anyone"? I don't think so.

It's the same with card counters at a casino. The casino can throw card counters out because they can decide who plays at their establishment, but it would be unreasonable to jail card counters for playing blackjack in a way casinos don't intend.

>If you see a case where someone exploits a badly-coded computer program to take a hundred million dollars from someone

This phrasing removes relevant context to the point where it no longer represents what actually happened.

>refuses to return any of it (...)

I did not comment on any of this at all.

>I don't see how to actually reason with you

This is dismissive and denies my ability to be convinced by reasonable arguments. It is insulting, even if it's not intended that way.

> This phrasing removes relevant context to the point where it no longer represents what actually happened.

I don't think it does, but you don't explain why, so there is not much to argue. It is hard to get an objective description of what happened, but as far as I can tell, the liquidity pools operated by Indexed Finance are governed by a smart contract, the smart contract contained a mistake, and by exploiting that mistake, Medjedovic was able to drain them completely.

Can you explain to me in simple english how that is using the contract as intended? Note that "it's what the smart contract said" is not sufficient, for the same reason that "the web server allowed me to make that request" is not a defence against a charge of computer hacking. What the smart contract says is actually almost irrelevant. What is relevant is what it was intended to do.

Incidentally, why should I be rooting for this guy? It seems like literally the only argument in favour of what he did here is "everything that is possible is fair". His extraction of money is purely parasitic, and aside from merely identifying the bug, he hasn't done any useful work at all. I would grant that this applies to the lottery and card counting examples too. But why should I care that he's having his money taken away?

Many people disagree with you and describe what these people do as theft, so it's not as easy as you think.

>which Medjedovic rejected

I made no points at all about what he did afterward. This is all irrelevant to my point.

>I don't think it does, but you don't explain why

I did explain why further up in the thread. It's not just a badly coded computer program; it's a badly coded computer program that acts as a contract intended to circumvent government control of money. That's the context.

People agree to adhere to the smart contract instead of putting their money into a financial institution that uses contracts backed by laws enforced by governments. This guy adhered to the smart contract, and when the crypto company didn't like the outcome, they decided that none of the crypto stuff mattered and that the laws enforced by governments mattered after all.

But this makes cryptocurrencies entirely pointless. If you can use legal means to circumvent undesired smart contract outcomes, then you can just do that in the first place and not have the smart contract.

>Can you explain to me in simple english how that is using the contract as intended?

Yes, of course. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts. The agreement you make is written in the code of the contract. That is the intention behind a smart contract. It makes no sense to say that you did not adhere to the contract if it allowed you to do something. So by definition, anything you do that the contract enables you to do is using the contract as intended.

>Note that "it's what the smart contract said" is not sufficient, for the same reason that "the web server allowed me to make that request" is not a defence against a charge of computer hacking

Again, this argument ignores the context of smart contracts. Web servers don't claim that their code is a contract.

>why should I be rooting for this guy

It doesn't matter. I'm not rooting for this guy. I'm not arguing emotionally in favor of some guy who did something. In fact, I think he's a shithead.

I think this is the point where I really disagree with you. I don't see how this is different for smart contracts, as opposed to, say legal contracts written in english. It is not true in general that just because a contract says something, that those exact terms are enforced. There is a whole body of law around what terms are enforceable, what to do in cases of mistakes, and so on.

I am now really unclear on what your position is. I thought originally that you were in favour of smart contracts, and that it was somehow unfair or unethical for e.g. a court to rule whether a smart contract was intended to do something different than what it did. So I am trying to understand why you think it is unethical. In this case I think it is unethical to obey the smart contract, and that what this kid did is unethical and should be illegal. Are you saying what he did is wrong, but he should be allowed to do it anyway? If so, why?

It's different because the whole purpose of smart contracts is to circumvent governmental power structures. Otherwise, people would use regular contracts.

Technologically, it's much easier to set up a payment system using a centralized database in a specific jurisdiction and have people sign normal contracts to use the system. People create cryptocurrency systems to avoid that. They put much effort into creating payment systems independent of existing power structures. If this system does not work without backup from the legal system and governmental power, then all that effort is pointless.

>I thought originally that you were in favour of smart contracts

I think they're interesting.

>Are you saying what he did is wrong, but he should be allowed to do it anyway?

Yes.

>If so, why?

Using existing governmental power structures to punish people who adhere to smart contracts in ways some system members don't like invalidates the whole system. If cryptosystems don't work purely technologically without judicial support, they don't work, period.

What you're hoping for is, taken literally, impossible. Smart contracts can't protect people from fraud, or coercion. Since the law does protect them from these things, smart contracts cannot be totally isolated from the legal system (even if everyone wanted this, which they don't).

> Using existing governmental power structures to punish people who adhere to smart contracts in ways some system members don't like

Fine, but what about in ways that the rest of society don't like?

That's what traditional systems already do.

>Fine, but what about in ways that the rest of society don't like?

They don't participate in crypto.

I absolutely get your position, and possibly hypocritically supported the main branch when ethereum had a big fork over exactly this issue. But its also not hard to see where the "code is law" guys are coming from.

With a smart contract, you have the option to bake in a third parties keys to sort dispute resolution. If you choose not to, I dont see why it should be litigated instead.

To my mind, the choice not to have a mediation or dispute resolution option is just as much the "Intent" as not being hacked and drained of funds.

Actually, in many parts of the US, you do not have to have any law education to become a judge in district courts.

Saying "The code let me do it, so it should be legal" is a bit like if I leave a "free to a good home" sign on a plant pot outside my home, and it leans on my car. It does not mean you are permitted to take my car, no matter how "obvious" it seems to you that it should.

  “Code is not law. Law is law,” Mr. Gottlieb wrote in a lengthy thread to Mr. Medjedovic on X in late October, 2021. “And what you did was not a ‘clever trade.’ It was market manipulation. It’s illegal. And people go to prison for it.”

> Yes, my client did take a stack $100 bills and leave it on the sidewalk atop an elaborate contract proclaiming that those $100 bills should be given to the very next person going by the name of "John" who found this stack of $100 bills upon the sidewalk, including specific language stating that anyone, even an unforeseen party meeting such criteria, would be entitled to that money. And indeed, my client signed and dated that document in triplicate. Yes my client did go to great lengths to write such a detailed and specific contract, and he was quite sure that such a contracts terms would be sufficient to ensure that only my clients brother, John Williams, would be entitled to the money, that same John Williams who lives across town. The brother would never find that money though, because the villainous, criminal, thief of a man John Smith stole that money from off the sidewalk when walking out of Smiths front door! Smith would have you believe that he was merely fulfilling the terms of a fortuitous open ended contract foolishly entered into by an idiot who failed to think critically about the terms said idiot entered into. That, however, is not important! I am here today to say that the terms of such a contract are not what is relevant, what is relevant is how upset my client is that he no longer has his money. I can prove that Smith stole that money, no matter what the documents signed by my client say! Those contracts are not law, only the law is law. What Smith did was not a "clever deal", it was theft. Which is illegal, and people go to prison for it.

A bit over dramatic, but that's how the lawyers statement reads to me.

However, we are talking about a system where a party has loudly and publicly stated that they'll move money under certain public conditions and a third party has walked up and said, "I meet those conditions, I am owed said money", and the computer dutifully agrees. We are currently looking at the foolish party who has entered into a contract trying to get out of that contract because they no longer like it's terms. Unfortunately for them, human law mostly sides with contracts, even when those contracts are represented in code.

(I am against prosecution in this case, but I think he should have most of the money confiscated)

I'd say the victims of scams have a much better case than this company does, at least the victims didn't make the rules for the scam.

Your analogy is confusing, you’re comparing a free plant on the roadside to 63 million dollars on a crypto exploit?

What's actually confusing in the analogy? Are you actually confused or just pretending? The point is that just because a sign says something under a literal reading, it doesn't mean that it's what was intended, or what's binding. If there's a piece of paper on my car saying "free to a good home", I probably didn't intend that you can take my car (or my house, or whatever). It's not very different to the fact that a 0-day exploit on your bank's web server does not entitle the thief to your money.

Your example is in the real world where there are things like weather and other variables that can't be accounted for. It's necessary for law to be based on common sense in such an environment.

But why can't we imagine removing this element of ambiguity? In a computer system you can account for all variables and completely define the environment. This would make interpretation of the law much easier which is surely a good thing.

But this kind of thing needs formal verification to work properly, which we are not good at. Trying to do it without formal verification is silly. But the broader idea is by no means "childish".

In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation

Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays

If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)

It’s a bunch of copium thinking that American tech workers are working 60-80 hour weeks.

And I know it’s not the norm, but right now I have “unlimited PTO” and most people take at least 5 weeks a year.

If the average American tech worker is making 2x - 4x the average EU worker, they should be able to save more than enough to have a three month cushion.

And we are talking about Google. They have a very generous severance package. Even Amazon where I use to work gave me three months severance.

I don’t care what the “average” is. I plan on taking 30 days this year.

First link -16 days for unlimited PTO vs 14 days without

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/ive-been-an-hr-professiona...

Now if you look at where those numbers come from, this article quotes another article from WSJ (https://archive.is/MVRur) which is also titled "Why You Should Be Wary of the Unlimited Vacation Perk". Hmm...

And the WSJ article, in turn, takes its number from this report: https://www.empower.com/the-currency/work/pursuit-of-pto-res...

Now when you look at the survey, the problem with comparing those numbers is that they are averages for all workers. That is, 14 days without PTO is the average across all companies, not just those that had adopted UPTO. And the 16 days with UPTO is, of course, only for those companies. So the numbers don't actually tell you anything about the effect of "unlimited" PTO adoption in a given company. Those companies where 14 days is the norm are generally not the ones that decide to switch to UPTO because, well, there's no actual benefit in it for them. Companies that do adopt it, like many Big Tech firms in the past few years, are also the ones that had much more generous paid PTO to begin with - at Microsoft, for example, as a senior engineer, I had four weeks of PTO before the switch.

So, you need to look at comparisons before and after UPTO adoption for the same company to see the trend. Conveniently, that very article you linked to has some sources for that, e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220520-the-smoke-and-...

There are other negative aspects to it, too. For example, when you have guaranteed vacation PTO, it is wholly separate from other things like paid medical leave. But with UPTO, it's that much harder to argue for it to your manager if you have already taken medical leave that year.

I’m not going to look up the PTO for other BigTech companies. But the one I worked for (Amazon) had 15 days PTO and 5 personal days.

And most people who have defined PTO, also don’t take all of their allocated days off.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than...

That’s not evidence of defined vs unlimited PTO as a limiting factor of UPTO.

And because of laws in different states, companies with unlimited PTO also often have a separate bucket for sick time.

The only time I've ever been expected to put in those kinds of long hours was in case of an emergency. Stuff like, a natural disaster hit the company's primary data center so they needed to be all hands on deck to get services restored. But it's definitely not common day to day, and even in case of emergencies the company generally gives you a little something (extra time off, a bonus, whatever) to compensate you for the long hard hours you had to work.

Though what would also help if you had an explanation for why we tend to hear these stories mostly from the US and not from other countries.

because internet is dominated by 'stories mostly from US'

Does it? Sounds more like an opinion than a fact to me.

There is demand for tech workers, but the output of EU tech companies can't afford huge salaries. Lower margins.

When you say "Account migration does not work" I am forced to ask "compared to what"? There are literally no alternatives. If you have a twitter account with 20k tweets, and you want to leave twitter, "GFY". Ditto if you get banned. A public, instance-independent list of banned and redirected accounts (which survives the death of an instance) could perhaps be a really useful service.

Culturally, mastodon people do seem opposed to bots. There are a lot of people who are hostile to indexing, and hostile to really any automated interactions at all. This causes a huge controversy every few months, when someone tries to build search and gets run out of the community for using a crawler to do it. It is worth mentioning that fedi socials have a pretty high concentration of trans and other marginalised users, who are burned by targeted harassment on other parts of the internet. I think the resistance to bots is part of this.

Bluesky allows you to use your domain as your account identity, so if you want to move, you just change the DNS record.

Quite a few people downloaded their entire Twitter archive and uploaded it to Bluesky. For example: https://bsky.app/profile/shortformernie.bsky.social

I can download my entire repo in one click and move it to another PDS, perhaps one I run, or save it for later when there are more options. Or come up with my own way to transform it.