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

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

#241

Post by xrd »

deweller wrote: post #116

Snowden 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." No…

I normally would align with Snowden, but Worldcoin using ZK-proofs is an important discussion to have. It is going to take a while for the world to understand the benefits that zero knowledge proofs offer in terms of privacy, but they are starting to be found everywhere, and privacy advocates (of which I consider myself one) need to understand what they offer to the consumer in exchange for some real benefits that we cannot get through public policy, etc.

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

#242

Post by olalonde »

danuker wrote: post #8

Worldcoin 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 feel like many cryptocurrencies are attempting to achieve a metaphorical perpetual motion machine. The cryptocurrency world desperately needs its equivalent of the laws of thermodynamics / CAP theorem to help debunk dubious claims and prevent people from wasting efforts on futile endeavors.

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

#243

Post by mgraczyk »

One thing I found interesting about Worldcoin is that they have a graph of predicted "future sign-up rate" extrapolated from their trials. They predict an exponential increase in sign-ups with >2B people signed up in 2 years.

Like other crypto projects, they misleading fit their data with the wrong curve. If you fit growth numbers with an S-curve instead of an exponential, you get results that are highly sensitive to noise in the initial data:

https://constancecrozier.com/2020/04/16/forecasting-s-curves...

This is why it will end up being the case that the actual number of users signed up for Worldcoin in 2 years was assigned a probability of ~0.00 by their growth model.

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

#244

Post by dang »

censormenow wrote: post #28
ahazred8ta wrote: post #3

Admins, please ban sharmin123, shahin841, hackerlist.co, and look at other shahin* user accounts https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sharmin123

The admins rate limit and flag (ban and censor) anyone talking negatively about Apple products, Google products, or Worldcoin. This is my third account of the week.

Plenty of users criticize all those things without getting banned. You're banned for posting flamewar comments and otherwise breaking the site guidelines, as well as for creating a long string of accounts to troll HN with. That's not cool.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. We're always happy to unban people when they sincerely want to use HN as intended, and we believe they'll actually do so. It's nothing personal—we're just trying to have an internet forum that stays interesting, doesn't burn itself to a crisp, and staves off the regression to internet mean for as a long as possible.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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

#245

Post by arcticbull »

anonporridge wrote: post #237
arcticbull wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool and when we do we can revisit Bitcoin.

That's not how progress in anything, whether it's increasing complexity in evolution of life or the advance of civilization, has ever worked. We do new things, and figure out how to manage the fallout for the successful things after the fact.

Also when we realize things are bad, we stop.

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

#246

Post by thruway516 »

xrd wrote: post #241
deweller wrote: post #116

Snowden 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." No…

I normally would align with Snowden, but Worldcoin using ZK-proofs is an important discussion to have. It is going to take a while for the world to understand the benefits that zero knowledge proofs offer in terms of privacy, but they are starting to be found everywhere, and privacy advocates (of which I consider myself one) need to understand what they offer to the consumer in exchange for some real benefits that we…

Zk proofs have nothing to do with Snowden’s criticism. They’re collecting and storing iris hashes regardless of whether they’re using Zk proofs downstream in their tech stack.

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

#247

Post by mgraczyk »

danuker wrote: post #8

Worldcoin 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…

No need to speculate, it's the second one and they even describe it on their web site:

    Orbs will be remotely monitored and compared to other Orbs. Such monitoring is based on non-biometric metadata from the Orb, including battery level, temperature, and network strength. Anomalies will be flagged and lead to Orbs being deactivated. This anomaly detection happens in the cloud and therefore comes with higher security guarantees than device-level spoof and tamper detection.
What you're mistaken about is that the "currency" is not the same as this biometric airdrop (initial distribution). The airdrop is not open at all. The currency itself, once distributed, is just a token on Ethereum (with optimistic rollups). It's essentially as open as any other Ethereum token.

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

#248

Post by anonporridge »

denton-scratch wrote: post #157
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I left Silicon Valley, it was to escape the bubble. What you wrote is what I felt. But in hindsight, I think "Silicon Valley is out of touch with the real world" is too innocuous. Obviously, it is, but a lot of the "elite" aren't just happily enjoying their bubble. They are intent on shaping "the real world", and they have enough resources and influence to be successful some of the time. I doubt very much that t…

> Sadly, they're eventually likely to get it all. Not mine! But WTF, I'm just a paranoid weirdo.

Thing is, you don't matter.

If I have access to the data of 95% of people in a society, I have enough to model and predict behavior, and maybe even the hooks to inject information and influence future behavior.

The long tail of paranoid weirdos who spend all their time and energy fighting to maintain their privacy are irrelevant to the goal of societal domination.

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

#249

Post by matheusmoreira »

elif wrote: post #199
matheusmoreira wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof-of-work is also the only way to preserve decentralization. One CPU, one vote. Everyone can and should participate. Bitcoin failed at this because the hashing algorithm can be accelerated by specialized hardware, leading to professional miners setting up large centralized operations and taking over the network.

you are implicitly excluding proof of stake... is it an omission or do you have an actual argument for that?

The argument against proof of stake is it leads to centralization of the network in the hands of those holding the most coin. Not everyone can participate. People need what, 32 ETH in order to run a node?

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

#250

Post by mhh__ »

shafyy wrote: post #84
astoor wrote: post #46

This is just so wrong in so many different ways, it actually fills me with despair to think that there are people somewhere who actually think this is in some ways a good idea. To the point of wondering if there is some way of organising more direct action to stop this kind of disaster from befalling the human race.

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.

Regulation aside, I think we should take ethics much more seriously.

Engineers sign off on a building, if it falls hundreds could die. We don't do anything that grandiose usually, but sometimes software can have extreme impact on the world, and thus we should be prepared to consider the consequences of our actions thoroughly.

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