Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

decrypt.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 318 posts

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#201

Post by JohnFen »

ozim wrote: post #9
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #5

Ever since the movie "Demolition Man", it should be obvious why biometrics are a bad idea. (Yeah I know they also can try to scan for signs of life like blood flow - still, I don't like it). Even without the Demolition Man scenario, an even worse issue is that you can't change your biometrics in case somebody steals them. Fake fingerprints are already easy to do, other things surely can be cloned, too.

Kids or coworkers are not going to make fake fingerprints to mess with me. What they can do is to see password or pin code while I am typing those over my shoulder. Someone on the street also won't be able to see my pin code for unlocking phone if I use fingerprint. Those are scenarios that biometrics are handling really well. Biometrics against sophisticated attackers is not good idea. I don't encounter in my life "…

> Kids or coworkers are not going to make fake fingerprints to mess with me.

I know a few kids and coworkers who absolutely would, if it would get a laugh.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#203

Post by csee »

Traster wrote: post #107

I thought I'd look at the actual company after hearing about this. I'm just not a silicon valley person. Here's their how it works page - https://worldcoin.org/how-it-works . It includes a projection graph that has a scale in 500m user increments and 2 years. Then you have the real data: over 6 months they've signed up 120k users. Or to put it another way - their real data doesn't even appear on the scale that their…

I don't think they can leak biometric data. Even if they figure out the hashing algo that doesn't mean they can invert someone's hash.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#204

Post by JohnFen »

Julien_r2 wrote: post #21

Wow I feel I just came out of a cave, to discover only now about Worldcoin.. Apart from the arguable concept itself, I'm genuinely wondering why betting on yet another scanning device, instead of using fingerprint scan, which is now available on most smartphones ? Is it that much more reliable that it's worth going through the pain of engineering a new hardware ? Finally, how they could expect any other reactions tha…

> how they could expect any other reactions than doubt, fear, and reject, out of this solution,

It looks to me like they're targeting people who are not as concerned or thoughtful about such issues.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#205

Post by anonporridge »

drdrey wrote: post #156
rolandog wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... What if you had an AI randomly generate unique irises, you then print them on adhesive paper, and paste the cut-outs on the eyes of one of those robo-faces? Unlimited money!

They allegedly do liveness checks with an IR sensor to make sure they are scanning a live eye

Humans and eyeballs are just machines. Anything they check for liveness can be simulated if there's enough incentive to do it.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#206

Post by [deleted] »

fortydegrees wrote: post #136
Traster wrote: post #107

I thought I'd look at the actual company after hearing about this. I'm just not a silicon valley person. Here's their how it works page - https://worldcoin.org/how-it-works . It includes a projection graph that has a scale in 500m user increments and 2 years. Then you have the real data: over 6 months they've signed up 120k users. Or to put it another way - their real data doesn't even appear on the scale that their…

To protect the device getting cracked, couldn't you just have it send a message if/when the device is opened in a way it shouldn't (e.g. for inspection) and thus make that key invalid?

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#207

Post by waldohatesyou »

shafyy wrote: post #115
hobofan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

How confident are you that the government could accurately assess the risk of any technology? Why couldn't I just write the same risks for any given social networking site and copy-paste it every single time I was faced with a compliance form like the one you described. This all just sounds like an exercise in pointless box ticking but that just might be my deep skepticism of governments talking.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#208

Post by arcticbull »

fleddr wrote: post #142
mempko wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not here to support worldcoin because I think it's a bad idea. However, proof-of-work is also a bad idea. What bitcoin is is a decentralized clock rewarding random machines every tick. It produces bad dynamics. Parento distribution of reward, huge amount of energy waste. All so rich people (Yes, most bitcoin is held by a few rich people) can transfer wealth. It's a stupid idea. You can appreciate it's simplicity…

It's not a stupid idea. It's the invention of digital scarcity. It is supposed to be real world costly. High energy use in itself is not the issue, it's CO2 emissions. Energy can be locally abundant, renewable, yet remote, hard to transport to civilization. That would be an idealistic example of sustainable mining. Bitcoin mining isn't fully at that level of sustainability yet, but it's a solvable problem. Bitcoin is…

Everything everyone else said plus e-waste. My lord, Bitcoin produces as much e-waste as the entirety of the Netherlands to scribble a few bytes into a ledger once every 10 minutes lol. 97% of all mining devices will never successfully mine a single block. Each transaction produces as much e-waste as throwing out an iPad. That's on top of the power demand. You cannot make that sustainable. It's grey goo.

Re: Edward Snowden Slams Sam Altman's Worldcoin: 'Don't Catalogue Eyeballs'

#210

Post by JohnFen »

denton-scratch wrote: post #161
booleandilemma wrote: post #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?

My guess is that the shitcoin is a distraction; the real project is to make a better iris scanner. I can see nothing even slightly attractive about this shitcoin, but you can patent and sell a better iris scanner.

Or to assemble a database of iris hashes similar to the databases of faces that are already kept.
Post reply on HN