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To point out one part that is completely false:

> 90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities but is the byproduct of the Bitcoin protocol design as well as the preference of many participants for anonymity.

>In other words, 90% of Bitcoin's carbon footprint is used in a partially successful attempt to compensate for its deficient anonymity.

Miners are mainly rewarded by the new bitcoins that are created in each new block. The energy usage does not come from processing transactions; it is largely independent, it is not uncommon that miners even mine blocks that contain no transactions. If you stop 90% of transactions you will definitely not see the hashrate drop by 90%.

It shocks me that so few people seem to understand this; we keep having articles saying that bitcoin transactions are a waste of energy, and everyone ignoring that the block reward halves every few years until it drops to zero, so it not built with the incentives to use this much energy forever. In fact there is the opposite concern: with widespread usage of systems like Lightning Network and no block reward, there may not be enough incentive for people to mine enough to secure the network.

Indeed people tend to define microdosing as a dose without a mind-altering trip. The benefits largely come from the trip itself, rather than the trip being a side-effect, so this could be a fruitless venture. I think it is obviously silly that people expect to be able to divorce the effects from the trip. It is still an extremely interesting question to ask what effects come from small sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics.

> if your computer is compromised while doing it, you can still lose it.

The hardware wallet itself has a screen, and requires you to confirm your transactions, so generally not true

I hate talking on the phone. I'd rather pay a huge price markup than have to do that.

Delivery works so well in my area that i just make some taps on my phone and food arrives at my door with no human contact. Incomparable experience compared to talking on the phone and then going out and picking it up.

I disagree with your assumptions. There are many conflicting views, and to me it is an objective fact that barely anyone really understands the technology and what its ramifications will be. Morality and development is a very tricky thing. As an analogy, all of AI tech to me is leading toward a horrific future, but I don't see how anyone can stop that and Chinese autonomous military drones, mass surveillance etc; there was no way that early developers can predict how their tech will be used

My first thought when I heard about this story was to wonder if the 'elites' were involved in nudging this convenient disaster to happen in some shady way

As an Australian who was concerned enough to emigrate, i'd suggest learning about the security laws passed over the last 10 years and considering how it matches the opportunistic actions taken during the pandemic. Maybe you like the police state and it is somewhat democratic so far but that doesnt mean isn't quite literally a police state.

Viable, better alternatives need to be built before that is possible

You say this like there's an alternative. Closed source iOS that scans all your messages for CSAM?

Ironically I hated financially supporting Google but felt I had no choice but to get a Pixel to use GrapheneOS and have 5 years of security updates

>The study scales ended up being skewed because one subject had paradoxical response and felt relaxed instead on amphetamines, lol.

That happens to me and I want to research what it means but your link doesnt seem to work

Personally I became alienated from the music industry and don't know how to find new music.

I care about privacy, so I opted out from having a youtube/instagram/facebook account. I never used streaming because I listen to albums and want to own my music.

The result is that I don't even get notified when my favourite musicians recommend a band or even release a new album.

Where is the product for me? I am not in any of their data and just sit here listening to an offline library I built more than 10 years ago, desperate but struggling to find new stuff

The Australian authorities broke the law and mistreated him throughout the process. The court made its decision. I see the Minister using his power this way as systemic corruption that undermines the rule of law. As an Australian, I am not surprised by this; the legal system has been slowly eroded into a dystopian nightmare over the last 20 years and this is just another small step.

One 'unvaxxed' entry with natural immunity is nothing as a risk to public health compared to the systemic consequences of this.

For comparison, consider convicting a murderer over illegally obtained evidence. In a properly functioning liberal democracy the murderer should go free if the police act improperly, to protect the overall system.

I don't understand why you can't go for a walk while WFH. You're still the same distance from the cafe. If anything, with less constraint on your route, it leaves you more time to walk to more varied and nicer places

Wikileaks gets banned from all payment processors -> accepts bitcoin -> people donated whom would have been otherwise unable -> the censorship resistant technology facilitated democratic values and improved society, which is something valuable

Darknet markets are also facilitated, creating very valuable marketplaces. You wouldnt say ebay has no value

Some would argue that Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin. People have to fight for the name when there is a fork. Miners were fighting for a different chain and actually lost

Developers are wasting their time if nobody wants to use what they develop. Miners lose their income if they are mining blocks on a chain that nobody wants to use.

Users running software nodes validates the blocks, limiting what miners can do. Miners can be pushed to change the rules with methods like a 'User Activated Soft Fork'. The proof of work algorithm can even be changed, rendering all the ASIC hardware of the mining industry worthless.

What do you think malicious miners can actually do?

The inevitable problem that I see is that they will be able to censor transactions, since transactions are not private. But they can't change the rules or the chain splits, so what else do you think people are trusting them not to do?

Users, miners and developers all have different powers and hold each other to account in an interesting way that few people understand so far, affecting what 'control' really means. It needs to be put in context with alternatives. Compared to the alternative of corrupt governments that have complete control to print money at will, I have no doubt that it is a extremely promising experiment. ASICs do seem to pervert some incentives so people should be more interested in modified Proof-of-Work algorithms like Monero has been doing successfully

Payment options are only credit card and PayPal... Wtf? Lost my donation

There is strong consensus among bitcoin developers that PoS is inherently inappropriate and insecure.

The same people I knew who were buying canned food and masks in the beginning of 2020 while the governments and health organisations said it was nothing are now the "antivaxxers". Humans are rightfully afraid of the unknown. I fit into this group

However, the next pandemic could be very different now that covid has been used as a political tool and people think of such a relatively mild illness when they think of 'pandemic'.

Doing health checks and restricting foreign nationals arriving from specific high risk areas is not extreme at all, that has been done plenty of times. I don't think it is comparable at all to the unprecedented restrictions that become normal in the last 1-2 years.

>Do you think it would have been OK to implement restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?

Yes. In the beginning nobody knew how dangerous the virus was, so risk management should have been much more strict. It could have been a virus orders of magnitude worse than covid.

I've disagreed with the general global response at essentially every step. I think any reasonable person would have done better, and get the feeling that there are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised actions to explain how bad the response was.

In particular, in the beginning there were very clear indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management.

When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?

I agree with you, but society has recently decided to label anyone with these beliefs as an anti-vaxxer, so we'll have to get used to the new terminology

How do you define antivax? Pretty sure you would be defined as an antivaxxer by most people as a result of your opinion that some people don't need to get vaccines

>Also, if you're using Bitcoin with Lightning Network only, it's not possible to become associated with blacklisted addresses.

This is not true, there are many ways to gain information on those transactions.

> Some exchanges have been known to blacklist addresses, because they might have to follow certain AML/ATF orders. That's also why they don't accept completely anonymous cryptocurrencies like Monero at all.

It is necessary to react when you receive funds linked to illegal activity. Pretending that BTC is fungible when it is not can't change that. Accepting fungible goods like monero, cash, gold is generally legal though. So exchanges like Kraken do trade Monero but still do their due diligence on BTC transactions

If you accidentally accept funds linked to a sanctioned terrorist address or something, and then mix the money... I hope you have a good lawyer

There are not public lists, with exception of official government sanctioned addresses. Only the chain analysis companies have the (valuable) data so the future seems to be that businesses will need to pay for a subscription and share data with them, if you want to transact BTC. The algorithms are not clear either, because that information could be used by adversaries with tainted coins to try to evade detection

For this reason I would suggest using btcpayserver to only accept monero, since it is fungible like cash; for other cryptocurrencies I just don't know how to check if you're dealing with sanctioned entities etc without a middleman

I used BlueWallet a few weeks ago and kept hitting routing errors. I had to mess around with it for more than a day and transfer between several different wallets before finally escaped with my funds, so not very keen to try again

I find it ironic that people seem intent on holding Tether to a much higher standard than banks. I know there are certain legal guarantees applied to banks along with regulations, but all evidence points to Tether being in a much safer position than banks with their tiny fractional reserves. People are dissatisfied with anything less than fully-backed when it comes to 'crypto'.