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rdbell

162 karma · joined November 3, 2014

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rdbell··on The AI Credit Resale Economy
You can place your own CLIProxyAPI instance in front of the reseller proxy and block prompts/responses that look harmful.

There are community plugins like this: https://github.com/rheodev/cpa-plugin-privacyfilter

I haven't tried the plugin system myself yet.

rdbell··on Programmers need to start meditating
"Switch to a field that involves many people dying if you write a bug" doesn't sound like the less stressful alternative to me.
rdbell··on Pixel phones are sold with bootloader unlocking disabled
It usually takes about a month between the time I order something from the US and the time I have it in-hand. Last holiday season was about 2 months.

Never tried a return because I'd have to pay through the nose on shipping.

rdbell··on Rewrite it in Rust
It's like Go, but quicker.
rdbell··on OpenAI is working on a tool to watermark AI-generated text to prevent misuse
Won’t this be easy to defeat? Run the output through a translation model. English to whatever language, then back to English.
rdbell··on The Twitter Files
I think a distinction should be made between abusing position & relationships to spin a narrative vs abusing position and relationships to silence individuals.

Both are slimy and abusive but the latter is a violation of constitutional rights.

rdbell··on Ask HN: Carrier “lost” my number in a port request
This is even worse. You’re boned when Google bans your account and refuses to tell you why.
rdbell··on Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus
> without the cryptocurrency or blockchain

If only we had a way to solve this problem using a solution other than the technology that already solves this problem.

rdbell··on Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents to war and often helps countries become allies.
rdbell··on Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash
Musk’s specialty is selling vaporware and big promises.

Satoshi released working software without prior announcements and did hardly anything to promote it.

I don’t know how anyone really thinks Elon could be Satoshi.

rdbell··on Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
Every MMO in existence has external markets for RMT. There are stories of players in elite WoW guilds making 5-6 figures for helping noobs clear content.

Some people don’t mind spending $2000 to build an endgame character that’s only worth $1000 by the time they’re done with it.

We don’t call automotive hobbyists “marks” if they pay a mechanic to tune their car and devalue its resale price. Professionals/careerists exist in every hobby industry.

rdbell··on TNBL: The Narrow Bank, or how you have no right to have safe deposits
Thanks for sharing the SN thread.
rdbell··on A $3B Silk Road seizure will erase Ross Ulbricht’s debt
Funny how these “tainted” coins are no longer tainted as soon as the US gov gets their hands on them. Anyone else holding the same coins would have their assets seized and get taken in for questioning.
rdbell··on A $3B Silk Road seizure will erase Ross Ulbricht’s debt
Abuse of state power is like an adult bullying children to steal their lunch money. One-sided and totally despicable.
rdbell··on Ask HN: Are there other bodies like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta?
Pretty interesting.

Somaliland and Liberland are interesting stories as well. Kind of the opposite of what you’re looking for.

rdbell··on Tell HN: Coinbase now requires physical address of recipient in crypto transfers
There’s a place near my house that can exchange in/out of Bitcoin roughly $200k USD at a time without an appointment and they don’t ask for ID. They can do more if you schedule in advance.

I don’t live in a lawless third-world country. It’s very modern and safe here. Statistically safer than the US and other superpower countries.

It’s not fair to count your own country’s unfair regulations as a negative against Bitcoin itself.

rdbell··on Is Everything an MLM? (2019)
Reproduction is one if the most fundamental instincts ingrained in all of nature and you’re blaming people’s desire to have kids on some kind of capitalist conspiracy.

That’s an absurd take.

rdbell··on Ask HN: Is Security Possible?
I hadn’t heard of this before. Pretty neat way of using Bitcoin.
rdbell··on Mexico's top court strikes down cellphone registry with biometric data
I was in Mexico last year, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get a prepaid AT&T SIM card with cash and no ID.
rdbell··on Crypto is winning, and Bitcoin diehards are furious about it
“I know I’m fucked because they paid me in crypto, and I don’t even know how to cash out.”

How does this guy even tie his shoes in the morning? Try walking up to literally anyone attending these “banging” crypto parties that you’re going to, and ask if they want to give you cash for your crypto. I can’t think of an easier environment in which you can quickly convert your crypto to fiat.

rdbell··on Create a positive feedback loop to become motivated
Thanks. This is a good reminder for some of us.
rdbell··on Payments companies have all left SF after Prop C
Sounds like a recipe for the cobra effect.
rdbell··on Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism
This already happened to Canadians and Russians earlier this year with traditional banks & payment systems. How would this be achieved in the world of Bitcoin and Lightning Network?
rdbell··on Expanding global payouts with crypto
I live in a country that’s unsupported by Stripe and most other global merchant processors.

I’d love to be able to use Stripe for web credit card payments if I could. Hopefully this is a step towards that.

rdbell··on Expanding global payouts with crypto
And gmail would have less users if it was called ClownFartMail. Not sure what you’re getting at.
rdbell··on Blockfi agrees to pay $100M in penalties and pursue registration
> There are no financial regulations that currently harm me, a consumer.

Mostly true if your main financial transactions are receiving bank deposits from your work & paying bills, and if you, your family and your friends all live in first-world countries.

rdbell··on macOS Monterey shows that Zoom continues to use mic regardless of being in call
I’ve tried to avoid Zoom as much as possible. Is there any reason to use the desktop app instead of the web client?
rdbell··on On the Future of 12ft
I like the model that Yalls.org implements: https://yalls.org/articles/97d67df1-d721-417d-a6c0-11d793739...

"Continue Reading: $0.06 USD"

rdbell··on Cryptocurrency off-ramps, and the shift towards centralization
It can lead to false positives. Only the government is allowed to sell tainted coins. Very convenient rule for law enforcement agencies.
rdbell··on David Rosenthal on cryptocurrencies
> I cannot understand anyone who promotes the use of systems that catastrophically increase the risks of human error, particularly for the most vulnerable, and which pointedly ignore that other solutions may work better.

I can't speak for others, but I think it's great to promote whatever solutions may be solving problems for a particular use-case. Ideas like social key recovery give users an option to trade some level of full self-control for a safety net. I expect user-friendly implementations of ideas like this to be successful in the near future.

I think it's great that users can choose to participate in Bitcoin however they want. Some people will write their own private clients that nobody else uses. Some people will give all of their coins to a billion dollar company to hold for them. In-between the two extremes, people make their own decisions on what risks they can tolerate and participate in a way that's right for them.

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