339 karma · joined February 5, 2018
Then he was the product lead on the Chrome team. I don't know if it was him who lobbied Page to create Chrome.
Do you really want to switch discussion to personalities?
> and dragnet surveillance and the power to freeze or seize money from anyone's account at will
You still miss the point. Crypto is money only if it can be used to buy real world goods. If I control the real world then you can have all the crypto you want and still not be able to buy a loaf of bread.
> I actually know the numbers
Actually no. You are comparing apples to oranges. A transaction in a centralized database is always cheaper than in a distributed one. No exceptions.
> Says who?
I do. All your arguments still miss the fundamental issue with the distributed ledger: it's more expensive to operate than a centralized ledger. It's really that simple. 2 > 1. No amount of research and algorithms will change the fact that 2 is greater than 1.
The only reason you would pay more if you cannot get it for less. In case of a distributed ledger you would use it only when the centralized one is not available. The only known case when the centralized is not available is when it's unlawful.
> This literally took decades
No. All the techologies you listed were immediately useful. Blockchain has been around for more than 10 years. It's still not used for anything but circumvention of regulations.
> Really no idea what you are on about here.
Yes, I noticed.
You are mistaken. There is a technique called "rubber-hose cryptanalysis" which works wonderfully in cases like the one you described. Once applied, you will gladly give up your key and anything else they ask for. That's what violence means.
If you do not control real world then you do not control anything. There is no way around violence. At least for as long as humans have physical bodies and live off blockchain.
> unacceptable to have compliance enforced on us as the current financial system does
You are arguing that because the current system is excessively regulated, then a system with no means to enforce the rules will work better. The problem with that is that blockchain is a lot more expensive to operate per transaction that the conventional systems. Because of that it can only be used when the conventional system cannot be, specifically for circumventing the regulations, i.e. breaking the law.
> but I strongly disagree.
You say you disagree, but you actually agree. All the cases you listed are cases of "circumvention of regulations".
> We'll see.
It's been long enough to see. Believing otherwise is like believing that this contraption with a few more tweaks will produce perpetual motion.
> some forms of governance
It's either able to enforce the rules with real-world violence, or it is irrelevant. It's really that binary 0 or 1. Nothing in between.
> Not that I agree with this statement
It's basic math as in 2 greater than 1. It does not matter if you disagree with it.
> but if the alternative is round the clock surveillance and authoritarian enforcement of regulations
That's not the point. Blockchain is a tool that helps you circumvent regulations (good or bad authoritarian or not, does not matter). It's a tool which has only one use: to facilitate circumvention of regulations. The point is if blockchain is regulated then it's no longer a useful tool for breaking the law and consequently irrelevant.
Second: you can't eat blockchain, you can't fill your gas tank with blockchain, blockchain won't protect you from cold rain. You have to convert your cybercoin to real-world goods at some point. That means a contract "BTC 1000 for 1 loaf of bread". This contract has to be enforced off blockchain because 1 loaf of bread is not on blockchain (no, NFT is not a loaf of bread, you can't eat NFT). And you guessed it right: this contract has to be enforced with a threat of violence. That means off-blockchain government.
> There are already plenty of projects experimenting with "on-chain governance"
I bet you a $1 none of them will go anywhere. Like all those experimental applications of blockchain that IBM, Maersk, and many others played with. Hard no useful outcome, complete failure each and every time for fundamental reasons. Like a complete failure each and every time anyone tries to build a perpetuum mobile.
There is one ONE (hard 1, like in math) use case for blockchain: circumvention of regulations. Once regulations are implemented on blockchain, it would lose its one and only use case.
The system we have today requires surveillance and control of governments to function. The parallel system or systems on the internet would also require some form of external, i.e. off blockchain, control to function as well as the current system. So far humanity has not invented anything better than democratically elected governments to implement such controls.
Blockchain cannot in principle replace governments because governing comes down to use of violence. Unless, of course, you are advocating going back to times when barons fought each other with private armies.
It comes down to someone's judgement call. It's usually not possible to quantify if "certain products" should be prioritized over "other important issues" or vice versa. Particularly so for someone who does not have the full picture.
> Not being able to output any higher or better quality products and services despite aggressively hiring more employees
Is it objective or just an opinion? If objective, how is it measured?
> Why fluff and not actionable in this case?
Because "Someone anonymous said some of you were generally apathetic and sometimes condescending". "Well, can you give specific examples? No? Then it's fluff and not actionable".
The petition is immature and maybe 'condescending attitude' towards petitioner is deserved.
Technically it's a great rendering engine, fast, standards-compliant, maybe only slightly more buggy than Webkit. Unfortunately it has a different set of bugs than webkit. Web developers have just so much time to debug the apps. Once the app works for ~90% of users on webkit, spending as much time or more testing and debugging for ~7% of FF users is not always justified.
This is a catch 22: FF users get more bugs - more pressure to move to Chrome, fewer users on FF - less money to develop Gecko leading to more bugs. My prediction is that FF will either drop Gecko or die.
The right approach to taxation would be to tax the exact cause of the problem: offshoring and automation. It can be done as a progressive per-employee Value Added Tax. The normal VAT is a fixed percentage on the difference between revenue and non-labor expenses. The new P-VAT would grow with the added value per US employee. For instance, if a pizzeria has added value of $50k per employee per year, the P-VAT could be zero. For the likes of Google and Apple with millions of dollars of added value per employee it could be 50% or more.
It would create an incentive to keep the jobs in the US. Also, it would be very hard to avoid if a company wants access to US market.
So, what prevents Apple from offering lightning connector as a common EU standard? :) Problem solved!
Sure, they may try to go after a myriad of individual operators but it's a completely different story that forcing half a dozen US companies to drop e2e encryption.
I booked a place in Reno a week in advance. On the night before check-in at about 2am I got a text from the host asking me to increase the price of stay by $20. That was small and I did not want the hassle of arguing but just decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I looked at it again on computer (as opposed to the phone) and saw something odd: the dates of stay we crossed and replaced by the exact same dates. Then I saw that weekdays were off. Then it dawned on me that the scammer changed the dates of stay to the next year and added $20 just to distract me.
The scam is simple. The scammer lists the same property twice with ~30% difference in price using slightly different photos and descriptions. The cheaper one goes first. If he books it at the higher price he kicks out the first renters with the "next year booking" scam. Reading reviews made it quite clear.
I reported the scammer to AirBnB, got a refund + $100 but they did not do anything other than $100 fine to the scammer. The crook makes more than that from a single scam. AirBnB just does not care.
Pecunia non olet.
If you are in the business of offering furtive financial services it makes total sense to stay abreast with the times and add crypto to the portfolio. It's a great instrument for both money laundering and tax evasion.
L's population is around 35 thousand. It's like City Council of Menlo Park CA gaining a status of a sovereign state and then making venture capitalists from Sand Hill Road exempt from SEC rules. L is trying to make a buck by being more permissive because they have nothing to lose otherwise.
> We speaking the same language yet?
I suppose we do. English that is :)
They already spent a good chunk of it: by Jan 31 2019 they spent $218M (that's a LOT! 200 employees burn no more than $50M a year, hosting maybe another $20M; the rest is probably just taken out by insiders). At that burn rate they likely have spent half a billion by now. Who is going to cover that?
> without having to exit to fiat
Last time I checked one cannot buy yachts and private jets for crypto.
Your response: "Digital asset exchanges and issuers already exist in Liechtenstein."
Why do you conflate the two? Is it intentional or due to lack of understanding? L. is trying to make money on ICOs because it does not have anything to lose with regular financial markets.
> I think that was a very reductive and inaccurate comment on a multifaceted topic
And I think that was an attempt to intentionally complicate a simple topic.
Crypto can be used as an investment in a form of an ICOs and that should be registered.
It can also be used as a currency instrument for (mostly illegal) transactions. When used as such it does not need to be registered.