Earlier quoted context omitted.
DRM magic inside the Orb.
Who's to say that employees (physical orb administrators) won't be in on it?
This is a cryptocurrency project. The opportunity for scamming is much, much bigger than that.
Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
111–120 of 318 posts
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
for(;;) new GUID();
How does that introduce them into the network? Is that even the format of the identifiers they use?
As for the network, it's as easy. It creates a hash of a retina on a single device with no further confirmation or verification.
So al this comes down to several rather simple steps:
- if the algorithm for the hash is known, generate new hashes programmatically
- if not, but the hash is simple, reverse engineer/brute force the hash, generate new hashes programmatically
- if not, generate synthetic retina images and feed them to the algorithm
--- cut off point, and a really don't think you would need anything beyond this point for a shitty cryptocoin like worldcoin ---
- if the algorithm can differentiate between flat images and "actual" retinas, for some definition of "actual", iterate through artificial eyes until they trigger the required response
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#113[deleted]
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#114Phase 1: Collect eyeballs;
Phase 2: ;
Phase 3: Profit!
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might be an onpopular opinion on here, but I think that software (and hardware) development needs to be regulated, similar to pharma or other regulated industries. The regulation can take into account several factors to make the barrier for smaller projects not too high.
So what roughly would you regulate about "software (and hardware) development"? FYI this project (and basically every cryptocurrency project) already falls under some kind of financial regulation in most jurisdictions.
The basic idea I have is that when you bring to market a new technological product, you need to register it with your government/jurisdiction and depending on a few params (maybe company size, revenue, funding, industry/vertical etc.) provide more information.
Similar to tax and accounting regulations, as you grow these regulations grow, too. For example you might need to provide risks and threats analyses for your technology.
You're liable to provide this information to the best of your ability given context (e.g., they wouldn't require a 30 page risk analysis from a indie hacker who has 20 users). If it turns out that you provided false information delibrately, or acted in bad faith, there are consequences like fines, bans, and so on.
Of course, based on your technology the government can prohbit you from bringing it to market, add constraints or require more info.
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#116Snowden is assuming that Worldcoin is saving hashes of eyeballs. That is not what Worldcoin is doing. Zero Knowledge proofs allow the system to prove that an eyeball exists without actually tying the biometric hash directly to an ID.
From the article: "We use the open-source Semaphore[19] zero-knowledge proof system to transfer the uniqueness of IrisHashes to the uniqueness of user accounts, without linking them."
Now, of course, one needs to trust that Worldcoin is actually doing what they say they are doing, but that is a different discussion.
Edit: I see now that they are saving this data during field testing. But it looks to me that the long term plan is to use ZK crypto to unlink the hash from the account. Snowden's "hot take" ignores this.
https://semaphore.appliedzkp.org/ https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks/
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#117“A new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible.”
Let’s ignore the fuzzy utopia talk and pretend that this is just a creepy plot to get a hash of every single person’s eyeballs.
What’s Sam’s next move?
What do you do when you have the hash of everyone’s eyes?
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't care about Worldcoin (I think it will fail, because they are solving the problem that does not exist), this post is false in multiple ways. First, retina scanning output hash is deterministic - it is supposed to generate the same result for the same eyeball. So it can't be replaced with random number generation. Second, network does not interpret hashes, except for making sure that single hash is awarde…
I don't see how the deterministic nature of retinal scanning hashes means they couldn't be forged randomly. If there's secret sauce or a secret key in the algorithm that generates the hash then it's not an open platform. And given the stakes, it's only a matter of time until that gets cracked.
> it's only a matter of time until that gets cracked.
or leaked
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
TY for the explainer. To make sure I understand, it sounds like a Sybil attack can exploit a hash function because ultimately, what is being hashed does not matter and to verify what is being hashed requires centralization.
Not necessarily. Maybe the scanners have a key that only it's creators can derive from some master key. The hash could come signed and all the public verification has to do is match against a public key. You don't need a database of hashes and you don't need a centralized db of source scans. Each scan hash could even chain with a previous scan hash and you can limit the number of times a key is good for, hence limiti…
Which, as always, raises the question of why a blockchain is necessary. If the creators' master key can be trusted with the power to decide who gets new coins, why don't the creators just store everyone's account balance in a database, and get rid of the enormous performance and energy costs of a distributed ledger?
Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'
#120Worldcoin issues tokens to people for scanning their retinas. Their magical orb device sends a biometric hash to their network. Here's my take on it: You can possibly replace their biometric device with a random hash generator. * If it works, it means the currency is not fairly distributed, but anyone sending valid hashes to their network is issued tokens, irrespective of whether the eyeballs described by those hashe…
I wouldn't call the coin distribution fair if the creators can allocate arbitrary amounts to themselves, which the Worldcoin creators appear able to do. Then again, even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply gets distributed in just the first few years, leaving only crumbs for late adopters.
> even PoW coins with no premine can be unfair if most of the long-term supply get distributed in just the few years
The number of early adopters with “diamond hands”, as they say, who resisted the temptation to sell at $2, $10, $100, … is vanishingly small. History is littered with early adopters who bailed out. Everyone has had years of opportunity to buy into Bitcoin at a fraction of its current value, and if the gamble pays off then people can currently buy Bitcoin at a fraction of its presumptive future value. There’s no unfairness here.
Everyone has had equal access the entire time, and Bitcoin people have been doing their best to get as many people onboarded as possible so they’re not left with “crumbs” after a monetary transition.
Of course, it’s not totally unreasonable to have believed that Bitcoin wasn’t going to work out, but in that case people have no grounds to complain about unfairness - they simply made a wrong choice (by current appearances).