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PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

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Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#781

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Keep in mind the United States only fails so spectacularly at socialized system implementation because the power of the socialized service to negotiate is defanged to prop up the excesses of the private sector. Let the government flex its muscles without artificial constraint, and watch how fast the market has to rein itself in to remain competitive. The reason Medicare is loathed, is because Medicare has a mandate t…

Medicare is loathed? That's news to me.

Sorry, I should have further qualified. It is loathed by the Medical Industrial Complex because they actually have the oomph to buy things at basically cost + a modest markup.

Unlike with insurers where price gouging becomes viable.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#782

I know of Spankchain[1] who are working on solving this on the Ethereum network. Otherwise, I see DAI token being ideal for this coupled with locking your DAI in MakerDAO [2] to earn interest. [1] https://spankchain.com/ [2] https://cdp.makerdao.com/

It's a shame nobody cares

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#783

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The coal mines in Australia are totally unnecessary. Australia is one of the best countries in the world for the ability to be powered on renewable energy. Which is now cheaper than coal. Literally the only purpose for coal in Australia is political reasons now. Yes I know coal is used for the production of other materials but there is more than enough coal currently being mined for steel. We just need to stop sensel…

Cool, don’t conflate coal mining with mining and you won’t have so many issues going forward.

The parent comment mentioned the boycotts in Australia. Maybe I should have added the context for those not in on Australian news but these boycotts are all about coal mining in Australia.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#784

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As far as I can tell, GHOST is only used to mitigate high hash power loss when confirmation times are lowered to 15 seconds. Orphaned blocks are very rare in Bitcoin. https://www.blockchain.com/btc/orphaned-blocks?offset=0 Even if you somehow saved all this wasted hash power, you would only maybe increase hash power by less than 1%!!! Read my comment here for more details. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2155099…

Sounds like we vehemently agree. Orphaned blocks are indeed rare in Bitcoin, because they have ten-minute block times. GHOST only helps when block times are so short that you get lots of orphaned blocks. And that's how Ethereum gets away with 15-second blocks.

But you haven't proven that 1 ETH 15 second block is equal or even in the same ballpark in security to a 10 minute BTC block.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#785

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You can unlock your HTLC without telling the other party the secret. You just close the channel by yourself and tell everyone else the secret and then ddosing so the other party can't redeem his HTLC before his HTLC expires.

> You can unlock your HTLC without telling the other party the secret. You just close the channel by yourself and tell everyone else the secret Do you not see the contradiction in your statement? You can’t spend your htlc without revealing the secret to the other party. If your stealing procedure involves ddosing random unknown party from being able to access any internet whatsoever to lock them out of minuscule amou…

Nope there is no contradiction. Again you haven't really thought about how this works. You are guaranteed to know who sent you your HTLC because the payment is settled through the channel. You cannot cloak this in any way.

You only need to ddos the lightning network so it won't record their HTLC when it expires. There is no need to ddos them, though I would argue it would be equally easy to do. And so while the other party will eventually see the secret on the block chain, they can't get their HTLC unlocked on the network before it expires.

And the lightning network has already been easily ddosed! We will see it happen more often if the lightning network ever gets bigger. This isn't some hypothetical situation.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can unlock your HTLC without telling the other party the secret. You just close the channel by yourself and tell everyone else the secret Do you not see the contradiction in your statement? You can’t spend your htlc without revealing the secret to the other party. If your stealing procedure involves ddosing random unknown party from being able to access any internet whatsoever to lock them out of minuscule amou…

Nope there is no contradiction. Again you haven't really thought about how this works. You are guaranteed to know who sent you your HTLC because the payment is settled through the channel. You cannot cloak this in any way. You only need to ddos the lightning network so it won't record their HTLC when it expires. There is no need to ddos them, though I would argue it would be equally easy to do. And so while the other…

> ddos the lightning network so it won't record their HTLC when it expires

this is not even a thing. lightning network is collection of independent nodes, there is no registry of payments and channels, every node keeps their own record.

> And so while the other party will eventually see the secret on the block chain, they can't get their HTLC unlocked on the network before it expires.

why? if a party is stuck in a payment and especially if they notice they are getting attacked - they will take steps to mitigate. the moment commitment with secret is broadcast and in the worst case - the moment it gets confirmed on chain the other party will know the secret and can unlock their htlc. the risk is essentially the same as with deep reorgs - very low because those are very rare events. and the hassle is most definitely not worth the value of a stolen micropayment, which is the primary purpose of LN.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#787
post #777
post #627

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Not just tax authorities, but (more importantly) police ones. The laws around things like sex work or drug consumptions, in most countries, are full of grey areas and willfully-contradictory positions (e.g. one can buy but the other can't sell, etc). So as soon as a transaction is categorised as part of a "problematic" economy, then police can get involved. If your bank lets through "hooker money" unchallenged, the p…

The thing is that if it was really a payment for an illegal activity, who actually would write the truth in the description?

Prostitution is legal in Germany but it is regulated and money made from it is taxable income.

Also famously you do have to pay taxes on illegal income, otherwise the income is both illegal and tax fraud.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#788

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USA: https://www.wellsfargo.com/online-banking/service-fees $30 to send a wire transfer, just within the country. And $15 to receive one too.

Why the heck do people use those kinds banks over there? Seems to me it takes away all the usefulness of one. It's a money bucket where you put money in and take money out. As soon as one of those three aspects is not there, then what is the point?

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/wire-transfers-what-... There really isn't any low cost option for wire transfers in the US. ACH is the free transfer option, and it takes 1-3 days. Wire transfers are the "pay a lot for immediate confirmation" option just for the very few transfers it's worth it on. The average person is unlikely to ever make or receive a wire transfer. There are consumer-level alternatives for personal transfers like Venmo: https://venmo.com/about/product/

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#789
post #720

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This is just plain wrong. Look at all the religion-run hospitals in America, and how they use religious values to affect their patient care and which services they do and don't allow. This has been affirmed by the court system even. I personally don't like it one bit; people should be getting medical services based on the latest medical science, not based on some millennia-old book of fables, but unfortunately that's…

You are talking about the religious beliefs of people running the company.

No, I'm not. These companies push the company's religious beliefs and values onto the employees, and onto their customers when they can.

Re: PayPal stops payouts to models on Pornhub

#790
post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a distinction as far as the nature of the boycott, though it's not a clear line. Declining to buy from or work for a company is pretty much always justifiable. Refusing to provide customer-specific services/work (a rental crane, management consulting, etc.) is a more impactful move, but it's still basically a refusal to engage with the target, either by providing a limited resource or by being enabli…

>but it becomes more vividly alarming if we imagine denying electricity or highway access to an unpopular business. This is why even as Cloudflare decided to shut down Stormfront, they publicly worried that it was a dangerous path to go down. I can understand their worry, but I think they did the right thing. If I owned a hosting service, I wouldn't provide services to people like that either. I don't want to be know…

Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that I think Cloudflare was wrong. And given that they did the thing while worrying about the consequences, they clearly figured it was the right thing to do also.

As far as the basic elements of life - utilities and travel access - it's good that they're effectively guaranteed neutrality by governments. Given that living without running water and power is illegal in much of the US, it's obviously not reasonable for the providers to cut people off at will.

Hosting is certainly not any kind of right. Cloudflare's position is a bit different, because without DDoS protection an unpopular site will be permanently inaccessible - it's not just "go do it yourself" but "people who dislike you will effectively shut this down". Even there, though, you could plausibly find another provider or make an attempt to do it yourself. Internet access via ISPs is far more fundamental, which is why I don't mind Cloudflare's action but have serious objections to UK-style mandates that ISPs block certain content.

I suppose my larger question is where the bounds lie on speech as a practical right. It's easy to say "we're not stopping your speech, just your ability to put up your own website". And in reality, hateful content similar to what Cloudflare targeted shows up on all sorts of other blogs, forums, etc. But "you can't have a site" is tantamount to "you can only say this if you find another private party willing to leave it on their site". When we look at physical equivalents, saying "you can publish these thoughts if a mainstream paper will take them, but you're not allowed to print zines" would obviously be illegal, so I'd object to government-ordered shutdowns. But "somebody took all your free zines out of the box and burned them" is probably fair game between private entities, and is a closer analogue to "no DDoS protection".

Even more broadly than that, I think we have a pressing unsolved issue of private actions which are implicitly government-ordered. (This doesn't apply to the Cloudflare thing.) This was a big issue in the 1930/40s, with press and radio content being "managed" via the threat of IRS and antitrust investigations, but it was never actually resolved - practical changes just obviated the issue. Between TV consolidation, "safe harbor" laws, online payment processors, and large tech companies with strong government ties, that concern seems to be rising again.

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