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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#331

Post by jki275 »

tamrix wrote: post #311
c3534l wrote: post #246

Cryptocurrency enables people to make anonymous monetary transactions. Also, so does cash. Drug dealers and criminals still very much prefer cash. Is it wrong to work with certain traditional finance companies because of their association with cash? Should we be worried about users associating your favorite language with the seedy world of cash transactions which subvert the traditional role and spying capacity of la…

If you dive into the crypto world. There's a ton of cons that promise the world just to bump up the cost. A quick way to make a buck was to look at the dates for crypto roadmap announcement, launch or white paper. Buy crypto a week before, then sell a day before the announcement before everyone else buys in. This become so popular many coins where created just for this purpose. They would claim the world as the next…

I don’t agree with your characterization- anyone who thinks iohk is a pump and dump is woefully misinformed.

Cardano may or may not be the way of the future for who knows what, but the amount of academic work put into it really doesn’t support calling it a pump and dump.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#332

Post by TeeWEE »

tbenst wrote: post #168

I have great respect for Stephen Diehl and love his writing. But I must respectfully disagree. I think it’s fantastic that Haskell is seeing more paying jobs and corporate sponsored development thanks to crypto, and indeed Haskell can help reduce fraud in cryptocurrency, like what happened with the Ethereum’s DAO. The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but IMHO profoundly misguided.…

I'm not disagreeing with you. But a funny note:

You, as an investor are logically positive about this. Cause you want more poeple on board.

Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies. However stable countries have monetary systems to fakely keep the value stable using financial instruments. The question is: is that a good thing?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#333

Post by lucas_membrane »

An important aspect of life for many of us is the opportunity to be a moral agent. Being a successful moral agent as part of a profession in the world I know is not an easy goal to achieve. Diehl deserves kudos for posting this so that young people planning a career can be aware of some possible pitfalls and negative moral influences down the road when they include particular technological skill sets in their long-term road-maps.

I'm generally not in a technological workplace as I once was, but my recollection (from circa 1990) is that the ACM and the software section of the IEEE each had codes of ethics for their members to consult when knotty problems of good vs evil arose. Do current versions of those codes contain anything that might assist a responsible professional addressing the issues that Diehl describes?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#334

Post by Barrin92 »

TeeWEE wrote: post #332
tbenst wrote: post #168

I have great respect for Stephen Diehl and love his writing. But I must respectfully disagree. I think it’s fantastic that Haskell is seeing more paying jobs and corporate sponsored development thanks to crypto, and indeed Haskell can help reduce fraud in cryptocurrency, like what happened with the Ethereum’s DAO. The comparisons of crypto that he makes to frontier banks are interesting but IMHO profoundly misguided.…

I'm not disagreeing with you. But a funny note: You, as an investor are logically positive about this. Cause you want more poeple on board. Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies. However stable countries have monetary systems to fakely keep the value stable using financial instruments. The question is: is that a good t…

>Whether cryptos are a fad or not is based on believe. If we believe cryptos are worthless their value will drop. Same for real currencies

The value of individual currencies is based on trust in the institutions backing those currencies. The value of cryptocurrency as a technology (and currency in general), is not based on belief but on their real world utility, i.e do they function in some general way to satisfy some real need. (Exchanging value, storing value, and so on).

If crypto-currency can solve all the issues it has concerning speed, stability and so on it might be there to stay, if it can't it's just going to exist on the fringes.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#335

Post by lioeters »

lmm wrote: post #305
lioeters wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing HSBC did was ever shown to be criminal HSBC has a sordid history of associating with criminal or unethical behavior, including active participation in money-laundering - far from "moved money in a legal way". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies

When I drilled down into the details it looked like the accusations were all just smoke. It's things like "the law said that transactions from this region should be classified as medium risk or low risk depending on the bank's own judgement, and the bank decided to classify them as low risk", or "the bank provided services to company x, which was found out to be part of a criminal enterprise 10 years later". The only…

You're right to apply critical thinking and not trust the general sentiment against HSBC. That brings a healthy perspective.

I searched for "HSBC prosecution" and found the following article from December 2019.

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/markets/third-times-charm-hsbc...

The words of Brandon Garrett, a professor at the Duke University of Law, concludes:

> They are recidivists, but they do not receive harsher penalties despite their growing criminal records. Individual criminal defendants are not so lucky.

The article seems to provide factual support to the sentiment, that HSBC has a record of criminal behavior, in legal terms.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#336

Post by dingdingdang »

anaphor wrote: post #330
dingdingdang wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may well be "pretty infeasible" in the short run but having a morally* solid background for technological development is paramount for it's long-term well-being. Otherwise the foundations will rot while the establishment thrive and the creative driving forces will find new "cleaner" playgrounds within which to express themselves. *not talking about absolutist "this must have equal outcome for everyone" style moral…

I agree with your premise. I think we should divest from scammy cryptocurrency companies. I also think we should divest from scammy banks, and companies that supply weapons to be used for killing people overseas as well (specifically referring there to companies like Raytheon), and companies that violate our privacy and manipulate our society negatively (i.e. Facebook). Obviously if you release something with an open…

Yup, can agree on those points too.

> Obviously if you release something with an open source or FOSS license, then anyone is free to use it though. I'm against any kind of morality clause for free software.

Absolutely, it's the organisation /& community that needs to have the moral compass in proper order. In my optics it is about fostering the right sort of positive culture for use of a given tech rather than try to enforce it via totalitarian/legal means - the latter is bound to fail.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#337

Post by rimjongun »

dpc_pw wrote: post #207
rimjongun wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take a crack at this. “ When your language is so tiny and unpopular that a growth of couple of small projects in an industry your don't like can overshadow the whole existing community” So you decide to open your argument with an insult to the community... Not a great showing. “ If you create neutral open source tool like a programming language, you have to be OK with people using it to do stuff that you don't…

> So you decide to open your argument... Please don't expect anything too serious from me. :D > I can’t decide to call attention to it and recommend that people don’t let the bad influence guide the direction of the whole language? I can't see how even Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin teamed up and backed by a lot of money, could break ... let's say... C++ if they got on the design committee. Are they going to make the…

It’s not an either or, you’re making up an extreme purity test that just isn’t there.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#338

Post by lmm »

lioeters wrote: post #335
lmm wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I drilled down into the details it looked like the accusations were all just smoke. It's things like "the law said that transactions from this region should be classified as medium risk or low risk depending on the bank's own judgement, and the bank decided to classify them as low risk", or "the bank provided services to company x, which was found out to be part of a criminal enterprise 10 years later". The only…

You're right to apply critical thinking and not trust the general sentiment against HSBC. That brings a healthy perspective. I searched for "HSBC prosecution" and found the following article from December 2019. https://www.crainsnewyork.com/markets/third-times-charm-hsbc... The words of Brandon Garrett, a professor at the Duke University of Law, concludes: > They are recidivists, but they do not receive harsher penal…

> The article seems to provide factual support to the sentiment, that HSBC has a record of criminal behavior, in legal terms.

It doesn't. A deferred-prosecution agreement means that the case never went to court and they didn't admit guilt.

Obviously in theory a company that was confident of their innocence would refuse such an agreement. But the laws are ambiguous, public sentiment is against them, and in practice the industry regulators have a lot of discretion and will make life very hard for you if they decide you're fighting them.

HSBC does seem to have more than their fair share of allegations against them - but in my book circumstantial, ambiguous allegations never amount to a smoking gun even if there's a huge number of them.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#339

Post by regisg »

sukilot wrote: post #292
burkaman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, if the author didn't think cryptocurrencies were a problem, then he probably wouldn't be bothered by crypto currencies influencing the community. There are always going to be large organizations influencing Haskell, like the UK government and Microsoft in the past. I'm guessing this blog post is aimed at people who work with Haskell and know about the crypto companies in the community, but see them like any…

It's not about "influence". It's about feeling bad that the Haskell libraries are being paid for by the victims of financial scams.

Cardano was funded with an ICO in Japan, one of the most restrictive country about crypto-currencies. The amount was 64M$ which is not that much for developing a blockchain for 5 years with almost 100 researchers & devs. It's not a scam.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#340

Post by knorker »

isoskeles wrote: post #299
knorker wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when they do get bailed out. Eth.

What exactly are you referring to? Can you link an article to explain, as it sounds like you're saying Ethereum was bailed out by the federal government.

ETH core developers bailed out the rich-in-ETH people who lost money due to the bug in The DAO by forking the currency.

Capitalism for the poor, socialism for those close to the core developers.

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