Crypto can technically implement privacy and anonymity in a way that regulators cannot prevent. Now what do we do about it?
Also, Ethereum could adopt privacy by default some day, via their proposal process.
It's fascinating to watch regulators talk about "bitcoin" and "ethereum" as if they're "gold" and "oil", unchanging commodities that just need to be categorized and dealt with appropriately.
Ethereum is totally publicly visible today, but it does not need to be that way tomorrow. These are living projects.
I think this case is a pretty clear example of why.
The regulators are supposed to be protecting who from what exactly? And at whose expense?
So far I've seen two lines of reasoning:
1) Regulators are needed to protect me from myself. I can't assess if these dog-coins have long-term investment potential or not, so I want the government in the loop somehow. If I can purchase something on the internet, I assume it's safe, or the government wouldn't let it be sold.
2) Regulators need to protect the government from the effects of money laundering. I must give up privacy for the greater good, as the money laundered by North Korean hackers will be used against my country. Giving up all privacy in exchange for a small reduction in the funding of our enemies is always a good trade.
Even if I buy one of these arguments wholeheartedly, the practical matter is that we're trying to prevent math from being done here, and it's just not going to work. It's sort of like preventing piracy.
But public sentiment has become very anti-crypto, so I suspect we'll land in a war-on-drugs type situation where the crypto never really goes away and you can still transact it anonymously, but we mostly just don't talk about it except for the occasional bust to ensure more enforcement budget next year.
The governments are protecting their tax revenue (obviously), the illusion of free market(and it's obviously fully informed agents), and less obviously public order.
What was Abe's killer motivation? A cult brainwashed his mother into giving all her money and pension to them. Abe was one of the most public and prominent supporter of this cult amongst japanese officials. He killed him.
Do you think that can happen in the US? I mean, i know that while AR-15 are authorized, most sniper rifles aren't (which makes it very clear what's the NRA is really about), but you have hunting rifles with a great range and cheap, really good optics nowadays. If the scam industry aimed towards young isolated (but with wealthy enough parents) middle class kids keep up, if one of them snap and instead of a school shooting choose to kill bitboy or any other rugpuller, what happens?
He won't be as vilified as Abe's killer from the start. Now looks what's happening in Japan with the killer and Abe's reputation. Do you think that kind of mood can encourage copycats, especially if we enter a small depression?
The influencer+scam industry, in an economically constrained period, can lead to an evolution of our belief system, from the liberal 'i get what i deserve, mostly' to the fascist 'if I'm not as (good/well of/...) as I can be, it's because of this outgroup, and particularly him'. Both are fondamental attribution error fallacy, but one is really, really more violent than the other.
> The influencer+scam industry, in an economically constrained period, can lead to an evolution of our belief system, from the liberal 'i get what i deserve, mostly' to the fascist 'if I'm not as (good/well of/...) as I can be, it's because of this outgroup, and particularly him'. Both are fondamental attribution error fallacy, but one is really, really more violent than the other.
A heckler's veto, even a potentially fatal one, isn't an acceptable reason to curtail rights. In justifying such bad reasoning on the grounds of the violence that may ensue, you're arguing that one must preemptively surrender to terrorism.
You're also making an error of you're own: a slippery slope. By what method would this liberal society you speak of descend into fascism? And why a fascist state? Why not an monarchial empire? Mass violence isn't particularly limited to any one kind of government.
I'm not talking about the state, this isn't one of my fear right now. I'm saying that our current belief system is mostly liberal, where we attribute success and failure more to ourselves rather than luck, to the system we live in, or to the outgroup.
This is sort of a 'leftward' evolution of the old monarchist belief system where your success is based on your bloodline, whereas the 'rightward' evolution is fascism, where your failure are because the outgroup is cheating, empowered by traitors in your ingroup (thus all methods to reinforce your ingroup are good).
I'm afraid than right now, our belief system (i call it belief system, but the author i stole it from talked about the foundational myth of our ideologies) is shifting from one to the other.
And btw, i just realized that this can be misinterpreted (it's also the first time I've presented the thought like this), but I'm sure I've done this political commentary way before 2021, as I've found this definition in 2018.
Reply to the heckler veto and terrorism: no, that should not be acceptable, and yes, this is like surrendering to terrorism.
First, it's not the main cause.
Second, the main job of the government is to ensure stable society. I'm pretty sure the consensus on crypto isn't 'lets make everything more stable', rather the opposite. I'm not saying that they're right, and in an utopia without bad actors, they would be absolutely wrong. It's more complicated than that though.
I think this is exactly the kind of privacy you can defend in court.
The reason we don't have privacy is because technology has been centralized and it's easy to pressure providers to give up user's privacy.
The idea that parties have financial privacy between each other is actually the default. I can hand you physical cash. This is normal.
That's not because of some special provision that "allows" for cash to be private. That's just how it's always been done.
If you do work for me, and I hand you a gold coin, you don't have to do something special to make sure the government can track the item of value. You just mark it down on your taxes as income.
This is how things had been done until maybe the last 20 years or so, when 9/11 greatly expanded the government surveillance requirements on financial businesses.
There's a mountain of law to support private property transfer.
What the fuck are you talking about? Everyone wants to have a personal life outside of work. The poor can’t have it because the rich burn billions trying to start yet another rent seeking leech company.
> These patient assessment measures were developed to be administered at the initial patient interview and to monitor treatment progress, thus serving to advance the use of initial symptomatic status and patient reported outcome (PRO) information, as well as the use of “anchored” severity assessment instruments. Instructions, scoring information, and interpretation guidelines are included.
> Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much
Am I having trouble staying asleep because my alarm is going off? How much sleep is "too much"?
> Feeling bad about yourself—or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down
What about people that have let themselves and family down? Is that not valid?
> Poor appetite or overeating
Relative to what? I'm not being fed per gram with a feed chart. I have no idea how I'd answer this.
> Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way
This one's a trick question, because I think it's "nearly every day" for most people for at least a brief second per day? But say that and you might get shipped off to in-patient, so I know the answer is "never".
According to this thing, I probably have severe depression. I don't think I'm depressed though? There's no way to tell.
A better way to look at it might be that anyone who talks to a mental health professional has a good likelihood of leaving with a depression diagnosis, an SSRI prescription, and a follow up appointment.
WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including arsenic, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
I've heard a tinfoil take that this is intentional malicious compliance to cause banner blindness. If you put the warning on everything then you can sell dangerous materials because people won't be checking the label. If you label everything "WARNING: Contains Dihydrogenmonoxide" then people will ignore it when it says "WARNING: Contains Lead"
I've had exactly one time where prop 65 notified me of lead in food. Everything else has been histrionic. I can't help but wonder if there was a concerted effort to make these warnings as useless as they are.
Non-incel here (I swear, ignore the username) who read your post and some of the accompanying thread. Valid feelings, a little cringey, I hope you figure yourself out, but that's not what I want to comment about.
I spend more time than I should reading extremist content (ok, go ahead, look at the username) because I think the behavior of that crowd is fascinating and disturbingly influential. And sometimes it's funny. Also, they now set US policy, so maybe we should be paying attention.
> I will clear it up now: I am not any kind of incel, conspiracy theory believer, advocate of violence or racism, or follower of any dogma, philosophy, or charismatic person of any kind.
When people talk about "alt right pipeline", this is it, but casper isn't the perpetrator. He's the target.
Ok, not casper specifically. In those circles, they'd make fun of him blogging about his feelings for obvious reasons. Then they'd make fun of his artsy picture, then that he took down his picture, and once more if he puts it back up. The cycle of abuse would continue until he stops reacting to the crowd.
But it's a window into just how isolated people are and what it feels like to not have community. And we know there's millions or maybe tens of millions of people that feel this way and are nowhere near capable of articulating it.
It's so easy to imagine someone in his position be enticed a movement that has a consistent-ish ideology and purpose greater than yourself. And as a bonus, it comes with a group of regular guys that also hang out on discord or telegram all day and share memes. They might even meet up in the woods sometimes, just to drink some beers and bbq and shoot some guns once a month. Or "protect" an election or school board by providing "security". You know, community stuff.
> No, I am only interested in something real, whatever that may be.
So few can cope with this emotion by blogging about their feelings. For a lot of people "blame the others" seems to be the easiest way to cope with this feeling.
(Also, archive.org still has your picture up, either fix your link or remove the broken img tag. You just look like another @jack clone anyway and nobody cares.)
> When people talk about "alt right pipeline", this is it, but casper isn't the perpetrator. He's the target.
Some of us were on imageboards when pools were being closed. I am sure there's a number of people that don't understand that 'glowies' isn't meant to be serious, but a reference to someone who also used to post on hackernews. But I can assure you, at least pre us politics, most got that it was just dark humor.
Just like I will not accept that pepe the frog is some hate symbol, I will not accept that image boards are an alt right pipeline. If there is such a thing, they're mostly quarantined to a politics board. Who cares? Dont look at it if it bothers you.
Sorry to single you out specifically, but you look like you've thought a lot about that kind of thing, so I'll ask. When you say:
> But it's a window into just how isolated people are and what it feels like to not have community.
What do you mean by community? I see this word everywhere online, and never really understood it. I think it's mostly an American thing, but I'm not sure. I can see how someone has family, friends, acquaintances from work or hobbies, but I don't get what's meant by "community".
I think the original article painted it pretty well. If you could disappear and nobody would notice, you probably aren't part of a community. Shared interests and activities definitely count if there's meaningful interaction happening. Work can be a type of community too.
The hallmarks of community IMO are some shared values, some shared purpose, recurring interactions, united under some named banner. A well functioning workplace can feel a lot like a thriving community.
I don't really have much in the way of community myself at the moment, but I have experienced it before. I think it's one of those things like sex where everyone who's never participated thinks it's a huge deal, but once you've been at it a little while, it's still important, but the framing shifts a lot.
It's one thing to be a stable loner that's not invested in any group, but it's another to desperately be seeking a community without the experience to know what's "normal". That's where the parasocial stuff starts happening.
My definition of community is, a group of people that is a source of new relationships. It's bigger than a circle of friends; a community is necessarily large enough that not everyone knows everyone. But it's also cohesive enough, that if you throw a party and invite a community, you have a reasonable sense of who (or at least what kind of people) are going to show up.
This is the n'th tech company today that's made an announcement similar to this.
Even Disney is going to transport workers to abortion-legal states as needed as "health benefit".
It's certainly a perk and good on Google for this one, but we're headed to a dark place if your best shot at human rights is to retain employment by a big tech company.
I do not understand this comment (I am French, this may be a cultural/political thing)
Duo you mean that women who undergo abortion wild not do that if they had access to healthcare and maternity leave?
We have access to both and still have abortions. About 220k per year, which is about 30% of all pregnancies.
Either we have a dumb population that did not know what contraception is (we have sex ed all the time), or there are deeper reasons for this action which is never fun for a woman.
I don't think non-Americans appreciate the complexity here.
To anyone unfamiliar with our health care system for typical employees:
Once a year, most companies have a "benefits training" session that explains this year's crazy health care situation. They're boring and I only go to the first one when I join a company.
Anyone employed with benefits needs to have at least a vague understanding of everything in there or they're at financial risk.
So when you hear about contractors fighting to become employees so they have access to benefits, they're fighting for the opportunity to make these benefits elections.
I know plenty of people who design systems for a living that find getting their elections right to be confusing.
You'll notice that a big part of our health care cost mitigation is projecting expenses. It's like a prediction market where you can only lose less, but if you get it wrong you can lose a lot.
- you have mandatory health insurance which is a percentage of your income
- you have an extra insurance (called mutuelle) which you may not have if you are not salaried (but that you get anyway), or it may be compulsory if you are salaried.
Doctors can be in one of the two groups: 1 or 2. 1 means that your costs are fixed and regulated by law. This is for instance 25€ for a general/family doctor visit. n% of this is reimbursed by the compulsory insurance, and the other one reimburses the rest. n depends on the medical act - for instance for the visit to the MD n=70.
The group 2 fixes their prices as they wish. This is usually for specialists (but not always, there are plenty of specialists that are in the group 1)
The extra insurance covers up to M times the regular cost. M depends on the act and on the insurance.
Generally speaking - the more serious the act, the more you are reimbursed. A heart operation will be free no matter what, but something simple may cost a lot (more that the extra coverage). It is very rare, though, to go over that extra coverage.
Dental is not covered very well - it is OK for small things but implants fo instance are notoriously expensibve (you may pay, say, 1000€ out of 6000€). So is optical (you can always get glasses for free but they will not be the best ones).
That might be overly jaded. I think an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy is a loss for everyone involved, so it's a bit of a no-brainer for companies to offer this relocation.
I want to agree with you, and hope you're correct...but remember the job of actuaries and how they've worked in the past which is honestly rather depressing.
Specifically, Ford realizing it was cheaper to pay for crash lawsuits than making everyone's car safer in the days of rear end gas tanks.
I think that's a little too jaded. Much more likely they do this now for brownie points and quietly kill the program as soon as nobody's looking.
You also have to keep in mind that the cost of onboarding a new developer is orders of magnitude more expensive than allowing a developer to relocate out of state or pay for a temporary trip there.
Yep. They have already started talking about reversing marriage rights and contraception as well. It’s funny that an unelected body is now going to destroy the US and revert things that are clearly the majority opinion of the population.
Im glad I have dual citizenship because It does feel like the next 4 years is going to be a very sharp downturn (socially) in the US.
Probably kiss the Affordable Care Act goodbye and head back to the dark ages of losing your insurance and having a preexisting condition means that you get denied treatment.
People keep focusing on what this all means to minorities, but if you're just an old white male and sick they'll let you die, too.
Hmmm, if it wouldn't pass the Senate then I guess a lot of states' constituents don't want this. Sounds like it's better left to a state by state basis.
Congress should reflect the majority opinion of the population.
The maddening thing about this is these issues are all correctable by law, but most people (rightly, I think) don't believe the body with an 18% approval rating will successfully pass those laws.
> we're headed to a dark place if your best shot at human rights is to retain employment by a big tech company
But we're already here. We are in that dark place now. It's reality that if you work for big tech you get a perk this perk, and if not, you don't.
Edit: point being that we aren't heading to a bad place. Maybe we are heading to a worse place, but this has put a ton of people in a very bad place already.
The “consequences” you’re glossing over here include rape (both forcible and statutory), fetuses who would die at childbirth anyways, who endanger the lives of their mothers, and so forth. There’s no single group of people who seek out abortions, and virtually nobody wants one in the abstract: they’re a means for preserving bodily autonomy and a necessary consequence of our legal respect for said autonomy.
I literally have a friend-of-a-friend right now being denied an abortion for a fetus with severe Anencephaly. There’s a group thread trying to figure out where she can travel to in order to terminate.
These fucking monsters want her to carry this non viable fetus for 5 more months to deliver a guaranteed stillborn baby with 0 chance of survival. Can you even imagine the trauma that would inflict on the mother? The number of people who are going to ask about her pregnancy? The severe health impacts she’s going to face because pregnancies are extremely taxing on the body? The most ignorant among us are making laws based on their uniformed feelings and it’s going to cause serious harm to a lot of people.
As I said in another comment: that’s simply not your decision to make. You’re neither qualified nor entitled to their private life; the fact that the particulars revealed to you in this instance meet your standard does not mean anything.
And no, our laws are not based on that fundamental principle. The US legal system is built on the English system, which emphasizes autonomy in the forms of property, self-legislation, and all of those other things that actually appear in our foundational documents.
I’ll say it: the mother’s rights trump those of the fetus when they conflict.
If we accept the right of bodily autonomy then the fetus has no right to the mother’s blood and sustenance.
If the state denies pregnant women bodily autonomy then it must assume the responsibility to care for them. Stats that ban abortion should cover all costs of pregnancy, at minimum.
Do you deem yourself, or anyone else for that matter, qualified and entitled to the private circumstances that separate those two groups? Does that sound like a reasonable thing for the government to task itself with ascertaining?
And no, it’s not 1%. It’s closer to 10% in self-reporting figures[1], which don’t include the obvious problem of shame associated with rape and one’s own inability to healthily deliver a baby.
> You are left with the 99%: mostly a lazy and horrible way to do contraception
Did you read Justice Thomas' concurrence? This court has contraceptives in its sight as well. I'm sure it's going to be a few, harmless steps towards theocracy?
If animals do it in nature, and humans do it with dangerous methods when denied access to safe methods, it's going to be with us until the end of time, regardless of law.
Let's face it, this is just another drug war. An opportunity for Republicans to deny Americans personal autonomy and liberty. A justification for state aggression against your neighbors and friends. Wake up.
Monkeys also engage in cannibalism, sometimes even of their own dead young, and lions regularly commit infanticide. Appeals to nature are not compelling in the slightest when it comes to morality.
My inference from nature supported a non-moral point, namely "[abortion is] going to be with us until the end of time, regardless of law."
As for my moral argument, I invite you to read about the history of abortion, the history of abolition, and/or the history of America's war on drugs. I expect you will find abolition the easiest example to grok, since it's no longer a political issue. Note the moral arguments for abolition still stand, and yet it's no longer law.
You've got to understand, anti abortion people believe it is murder. This is akin to asking them "why do you care if some random person gets shot in south side Chicago?" It just isn't a line of discussion that makes any sense.
I am not 100% anti abortion, but I think it’s a bad thing.
The law said that at one day after birth if you kill a baby it’s murder but one day before it’s fine, do as you please it’s ’her choice’.
I think we are too far gone in that direction, a fetus still something, a human life in formation, damn you would face legal consequence if you mistreated a dog.
It doesn't seem like you've considered the possibility that a fetus with no consciousness being terminated may be more humane than forcing it into the hell of being raised by parents that don't want it or can't provide for it. More people should accept that what's going on inside someone else's body is none of their business.
The person you're responding to specifically said "one day before birth", I don't think you can find someone who credibly argues that a fetus at that stage is not a conscious human being. Whoever you're disagreeing with you're not responding to them.
Ok, well if he's only considering "one day before birth" scenarios he's gone reductio ad absurdum on the whole issue and he's also fighting a roughly nonexistent boogeyman. His own personal strawman, if you will.
It’s just a way to show that a fetus is still something. With pure materialist mindset we would say that it’s progressively closer to being a human as we get close to birth.
I find it strange that we get from zero value before birth to full human live once born and try to disregard the baby before birth.
I think we have to do a conscience examination, are we blind to something because it’s more convenient for us?
> I find it strange that we get from zero value before birth to full human live once born and try to disregard the baby before birth.
Do we though? Abortions statistics would show that progressively fewer abortions are performed the later the pregnancy, with 99% occurring before 21 weeks.
I think the person you’re replying to agrees with you; they were trying to intentionally be absurd. The only problem: a fetus is not a child, and this entire rhetorical strategy requires us to ignore that fact.
A fetus not a child, but concluding that it deserves no protection isn’t a foregone conclusion.
I mean people who injure a pregnant woman and it results in fetal death are criminally charged. So in that case we do consider it worthy of protection under the law.
Fetal death in those cases corresponds (or ought to correspond) to a projection of the actual victim’s wishes: harm to the fetus is exactly coextensive with harm to the pregnant person’s future plans for it.
That’s one of many sufficient conditions. Another is fetal viability, which is exactly why Roe allowed states to enact restrictions on late-term abortions.
Overall, we’re only having these conversations because a fetus has two simultaneous qualities: it bears visual resemblance to a human being, and it has the future potential to be a human being. We don’t concern ourselves nearly as much with sperm (no visual resemblance) or cakes shaped like babies (no future potential). Together, they deserve concern, but not overriding concern; that is reserved for the sole person in the equation.
But if I give birth to a 26 week premature baby, then kill it. That’s murder, but if I do while still in the womb I didn’t kill anything because the mother didn’t want it?
The logic fails, it literally the exact same life you’re ending. The difference is only the location and whether someone wants it.
What you’re identifying falls under viability as mentioned above, as well as basic independent self-regulation.
They’re not the same life, because they’re two different things: one is a premature newborn that we know can survive outside of a continuing pregnancy, and the other is a fetus that might survive. Unless you propose that we make all pregnant people deliver the moment their doctor believes that the fetus is viable (that seems like a bad state of affairs?), the two will remain different.
That makes no sense. A 26 week old premature baby that is born is still at a high risk of death. We don't know if it will survive. Yet we give it the full protection of any human being, but if one hour ago it was in the womb, we don't.
Murder is a holistic concept; it admits no possibility of fractionality. Ask yourself: what does it mean to do 60% of a murder?
Philosophers have, and will continue, to debate the sufficient conditions for humanity. But a conceptus meets none of them, nor does anything that is not independently viable.
I honestly don't care. 20 murders happened on the other side of the planet while I typed this comment. I think it's sad, but it doesn't affect my life in any material way.
Yes because it directly affects both my wife and my daughter. If either one chose to get an abortion I'd be very sad, but that's not a good reason to make something illegal.
You can confirm it's non-commercial and they let you keep it for free... for now.
They made the change fairly late in the process, and supposedly there was a way to undo the paid migrations by opening a support ticket, but I saw lots of posts about people being unable to migrate back and get refunded.
Thanks; great info! However, I think it's long past due for me to move the keys to my kingdom onto a paid service. However, maybe I'll leave one of my vanity domains on Google services. (Roughly 70 people worldwide share my surname, so it was easy to pick up a few vanity domains.)
Honestly though, it's not "fuck Congress", it's "fuck the electorate".
One of the great ironies about the rise of corporate fascism in the US is that the democracy does function on a technical level. If enough people worked together to do the right things, ballots could be cast and there is no dictator to prevent the will of the people from being heard.
Of course, that does not happen. The people have proven ineffective at self-governance.
At this point I'm wondering if we should just hand all governance over to a consortium of industry leaders that are accountable to shareholders. If we're going to do an oligarchy, let's at least be efficient about it.
That seems better to me than the current system of an easily brainwashed public electing whoever has the best disinformation campaign.
Do you think we'd have all these crazy IP laws if the big IP holders and big tech companies had to get in a room together and actually figure out what the law should be?
> we should just hand all governance over to a consortium of industry leaders that are accountable to shareholders. If we're going to do an oligarchy, let's at least be efficient about it.
All the fascist stuff is pretty bad -- nationalism, strongman leaders, isolating an "other" with violence, grifters selling out the people's interests to corporations -- I'm not down with any of that.
But maybe we could have some kind of system where corporations are forced to vote on governance that applies to all other corporations for the collective good of capitalist progress?
There needs to be some kind of unified governing principle to make everyone's lives better.
We can't go on with BIG_CO hiring lobbying firms to most efficiently snake their legislation through the system unchecked.
In my thought experiment here, most corporations would want to enact policy responsibly for the public good. Cooperation between corporations would happen, but the default position would be for more happy consumers.
So far we've tried letting representative democracy work out hard issues and that hasn't gone well. We've also tried deferring governance entirely to the courts with poor results.
Also, Ethereum could adopt privacy by default some day, via their proposal process.
It's fascinating to watch regulators talk about "bitcoin" and "ethereum" as if they're "gold" and "oil", unchanging commodities that just need to be categorized and dealt with appropriately.
Ethereum is totally publicly visible today, but it does not need to be that way tomorrow. These are living projects.