semiotagonal

> Nobody is saying you have to be an early adopter of these currencies.

This here is probably the source of our disagreement. As far as I can tell, tons of people actually are saying "get in now", which means we're no longer in the patience and investment stage, and any deficiencies in the cryptocurrency ecosystem have real consequences.

Indeed. This type of behavior only makes sense if defending trademarks never incurs a penalty when it gets overly aggressive.

I will avoid buying anything at backcountry.com (unless I forget, which hopefully I won't), so I guess that's a bit of a penalty this time.

Out of that entire list, the one thing that exists now is the Ethereum blockchain fix, and that basically required global agreement to respond to a single theft. That's not particularly scalable.

The rest of the things on the list aren't in significant use at the moment, and might never be. Measures that are not ready for prime-time are as good as nonexistent. We're talking about money here!

Bitcoin in particular seems to be driven by people who are really obsessed with the idea of having a store of wealth with zero risk (assuming they never make a mistake handling it, or get tricked by swindlers, which I think they're seriously underestimating).

But as you say, inflation is a tool; it motivates investment. Expropriation is a tool; I don't see how eliminating it is appealing at all to the billions of people with no savings at all. They may want to take money from the wealthy at some point.

If there's ever a point where "the masses" really understand bitcoin, and how a few HODLers possess most of it's value, they're not going to want it.

The amounts to giving the advantage to fraudsters until something that doesn't exist is invented.

Blockchains are irrevocable and unalterable, which removes two useful tools (reversing and changing transactions), and replaces them with nothing workable.

You wouldn't try to submit it to the "actual legitimate Bitcoin network" though. You'd bootstrap a whole new network instead. People might prefer a new blockchain that starts with a more even distribution, instead of enriching early adopters of BTC.

That said, blockchain may not work at all, as applied to digital currencies. The abilities to revoke and expropriate are tools, like prisons are. Their use, on occasion, is just. Society might not want to see those tools discarded.

There's probably a pretty high risk of some future event involving the Saudis being something they wouldn't want to incorporate in their show.

Just keep building them until people stop buying them. Most of the problems you mention are self-correcting; if conditions become unfavorable, demand will be reduced.

Yep.

The pumper and the dumper are generally the same entity in any pump and dump. Which mode that entity is in is a matter of timing.

It makes sense if Tether buys BTC with USDT that it just created out of nothing, then sells those BTC later for real dollars. Those real dollars can be used to collateralize the USDT "after the fact", and if the price went up between the two transactions, Tether keeps the difference.

It's sort of like an uncovered short of USDT - they take a negative position, buy BTC, sell BTC, then cover the negative position. (Except "cover" in this case really means "collateralize the USDT that someone else is holding".)

EDIT: I have no idea if that's what they were actually doing, but that's my interpretation of the author's interpretation of the lawsuit.

If Bitcoin companies maintained an adequate level of know-your-customer/anti-money-laundering compliance, maybe the mainstream banks would work with them. But as it stands, the banks have no reason to take any risks in dealing with them. If people resort to Tether and get burned, it's not the banks' problem.

As long as there is a hurdle where people can be "too stupid" to use BTC without getting scammed, BTC will never see wide adoption.

I went on a science-fiction reading binge a few years ago, and the majority I found atrocious, but Fiasco and Solaris really stood out as excellent novels.

I would love an inheritance tax. Even a 100% inheritance tax, on anything more than zero dollars.

Of course I don't really stand to inherit anything significant, so it's super easy for me to support.

Inheritance is one of those areas where people's values and what they'd support in practice tend to diverge, according to their incentives. (Same goes for California Proposition 13, incidentally).

Do you know of something superior?

Holy shit that works way better than I expected. The github project should link to this or a similar example, the technical description doesn't do it justice.

The pictures though. In the background of the top one, behind the hand of the kid who's standing on the tire, there appears to be a the ribcage of an enormous animal sticking out of the ground.

Ironically, for all the discussion of YouTube in the article, it links to the music on SoundCloud.

If it's biometric that's the only possible use of the bunker owner. Nevertheless, once he opens the door, there's no reason to let him in.

As if the helicopter pilot isn't gonna just kick the guy off and get his own friends and family to the bunker instead.

EDIT: Not to mention whoever built the bunker knows where it is. "Ownership" isn't going to be a real thing in the circumstances where a bunker is necessary.

> Quitting on moral grounds is a luxury in the scope of human history

So what? Freedom of speech is a luxury in the scope of human history as well.

Moreover, someone is making these choices. If it's within your power to have an effect on the choice, and one choice is more moral in your estimation, you're practically obliged to act, even if other people don't have that power.

> You have to let certain control go after a point.

Why? If it's within your power to prevent your work from being put to use in service of something you find immoral, why not attempt to organize with like-minded workers and put a stop to it?

If you can force your company to make a choice between a contract and its workforce, you can achieve your goal. There's no reason to let things go.

> Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to?

Because they have, or may have, the power to do so. If they can take control of their work, there's no reason not to do so.

EDITED TO ADD:

> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees?

They either don't object, or don't have the power within the company to object effectively.

Well, when it establishes a dominant position in the market using tactics that are no longer allowed, we do get a right to say that they should be broken up, or forced to start from scratch without their user data.

My own two cents is that Facebook should be dismantled to restore competition, then be allowed to do whatever it wants.

> their right to prioritize (based on money) what stuff goes on your feed

It's not your feed, it's their feed; you're just the person eating it.

You'll feel better though.

I'm not a lawyer, but there is a common-sense difference between Stack Exchange and Reddit.

On Reddit, it's just a community having a discussion. The participants, even the moderators, are mainly involved in guiding a discussion, and Reddit just facilitates that.

On Stack Overflow, the moderators really are working directly on improving the site's content. They're practically unpaid editors.

Although I think the person is getting too much grief for this, I have to say that if a CFO is allowed to make decisions in an area where he lacks understanding, simply because his title starts with a "C", that counts as a failure of the governance model.

It kinda reminds me of the Bayeux Tapestry, where the letters have to be spaced around people's heads.

Confession: I've been a professional software developer for 24 years, and I've never been able to get my foot in the door for an open-source project (other than my own open-sourced license stuff).

I think part of it is because the projects that are most worthwhile have no shortage of participants, so they don't need to extend any welcome to newcomers; and the projects that need participants often end up that way because they're not clearly good things to be working on in the first place.