switknee

Part of solving that problem is to make it expensive for governments to violate human rights. If spying on everyone is easier than targeted spying, they'll spy on everyone. Governments have a lot of different priorities and it's not always easy to balance them.

Online identity verification is probably best handled by an organization with that as a single priority.

Under the government ID scheme, we have to trust [bad corrupt government] to verify all citizens of [bad corrupt government]. Since that government frequently lies and acts maliciously using every means at their disposal, platforms will treat IDs verified by that government similar to bot traffic and the country will be cut off from the public internet. You'll be banning scientists and journalists from working with others around the world, just because they live in a country with an obnoxious government.

Isn't it also best if people can have multiple identities? Or should someone's contributions to X field be discounted because of their dabbling in fringe Y field?

Meat provides a lot of nutrition that crops do not. How about we "cut back" on manicured lawns instead? Ornamental grass is the single largest crop in the united states; and while some of it goes to compost which can be used to grow food, an estimated 8% of landfill waste in the united states is lawn clippings. When grass is put in landfill instead of compost it produces greenhouse gases (not to mention all the fuel used in lawnmowers and garbage trucks).

The idea that these "marginal" spaces which exist right beside where people live, eat and work cannot be used for food production is a little silly. It used to be quite common before it was cheap to have food airlifted from 10000km away. Alternately, the "wild yard" thing provides a lot of habitat for innumerable species and helps support the bird population.

Gift cards are much more commonly used for scams, because your grandma knows how to buy gift cards. The difference is that gift cards are very profitable to big chain stores, whereas cryptocurrency presents a threat to the status quo. Police in the USA also get to keep any unaccounted for cash or crypto they find in a search, so there's an added incentive to target the ATM.

Does western union reverse transactions? To my knowledge, they do not. Yes they co-operate with police, but so do licensed bitcoin ATM operators.

Also "defi" is just ponzi schemes. The only real use for crypto has been using it as money. People buy recreational drugs, yes. They also buy medicine, data privacy services, or donate to political causes that their government makes it risky to associate with. Depending on the coin it has the valued properties of being permissionless (can't be debanked), stable (USD-tether compared to local tin-pot currency), anonymous (monero). You may be lucky enough to have access to lots of stable currency which you can keep in a reliable bank account in a country that lets you buy everything you need, but don't make the mistake of believing that's the case for everybody.

It makes a lot of sense to seek ways to stop the scams. Distrust is expensive in a society. Targeting the money changers is certainly an idea, we'll see if it works. I predict nothing will change until the people who are running the fraud operations actually go to prison.

Buses have slightly lower capex but much higher opex from the perspective of the community. City street gets ripped up by buses, cyclists get caught under the bus and dragged for miles, children get asthma from the tire dust. It being easier to give trams priority at traffic lights and easier to make the tram autonomous are just added bonuses.

Lower flexibility is actually a feature when it comes to mass transit: People will build density along rail lines because they assume the town won't rip them up, making the rail line more valuable over time. A bus route can be cancelled the day after a disruptive mayor is voted into office.

I also don't see why you can't scale up the tram with additional cars, as long as you keep the lbs/sqft the same. 3 car trams are fine, 3 car busses are... not

The xz backdoor was caught before anyone used it. This is typical of open source backdoors, but atypical of proprietary ones. History is full of proprietary software with backdoors which were discovered after years or decades of being actively used. Lotus notes, RSA corporation, Cisco routers, Juniper switches, Huawei everything.

We have more or less immutable history of every change leading to every release of open source software. Any backdoors you previously created under an identity could burn that identity forever. That history is not available for proprietary software. If someone adds a backdoor in proprietary software for two years and then removes it in later versions, it's totally likely it'll never be noticed.

Thinking that open source software is at greater risk of being backdoored is akin to thinking most trees in the world grow along the road, just because you drive everywhere and have never been inside a forest.