Live data from Hacker News

I was wrong, we need crypto

world.hey.com

261–270 of 336 posts

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#261
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) The people begging for the right to die a slow brutal death that resembles a month long water boarding session. This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in. > 2) The people that trust that medical doctors around the entire plant earth aren't part of some super secret cabal hellbent on implanting mind-controlling microchips in them This is a disingenuous character smear…

> This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in. That is literally what they are protesting for, so I fail to see how it is disingenuous. > This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo. Perhaps you should "research" the difference between "status quo" and "factual". 10.6 billion people have gotten a covid vaccine, it would be pretty…

The current world population isn't even 8 billion yet [0]. That coupled with current vaccination rates across the world and the conflicting (and often suppressed) research about the covid vaccine efficacy, I am thoroughly confused.

[0] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world

[edit for additional thoughts]

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NDP's support was very weak but even then, my point was not about the Canadian parliament works. I'm very familiar with how our elections work, you just missed my point. The comment I was replying to was assuming some sort of mass Canadian consensus/unity w.r.t to the situation which is obviously not the case, because as the figures you cited yourself show, trudeau doesn't have a very strong democratic mandate. I…

"you just missed my point" No, I didn't. You pointed out the number of votes between two parties to demonstrate mandate. Only the actual numbers betray a completely different situation. You don't get to casually claim that one whole set don't matter because it makes your story work better. "NDP since they basically condemned trudeau" Again you're speaking like you don't know how politics work in Canada. How else do y…

I'm sorry but when did I ever say that every liberal is for what's happening or that every conservative is against?! I literally said that I'm not assuming any level of support, as opposed to what the comment I was replying to did. My point was that it's ridiculous to pretend there is a consensus. Of course I know that a lot of conservatives support the measures and if anything I'm sure the majority of Bloc supporters do. You are just ignoring what I said and assuming I just dont know how the system work.

Okay yes the CPC has been historically a law and order party so what? Trudeau has been very pro consensus/liberalism etc in the past too so what's your point? Just look at how he dealt with protests that he agreed with. And when has the CPC ever enacted the emergency measures act?

Not that it has anything to do with my original point anyways, which was that the original commenter was weirdly defensive about "attacking Canadian values" and that whole canadians don't necessarily agree with the American vision of freedom there is a huge line between that and agreeing wholesale with suspending the charter because of a protest.

You are also coming up with tons of ad-hoc explanations for everyone: the conservatives secretly support because of they are the party of law and order this but voted against, the ndp secretly supported this but attacked trudeau, the bloc secretly supported this but didn't. I guess that's your opinion (and not a fact) and yeah there is a lot of theater in parliamentary politics but even if we assume it's all just bs pandering they are still representing an electorate. The conservatives have had no problem voting for pandemic measures earlier when their voters supported it.

The CPC and PPC had a total of 40% of the votes, which is still a huge chunk of the population (yes not all of them are opposed to the measures but the only reliable figure we have is still the votes), which makes the GP's argument moot. That's it, it has nothing to do with what happens in parliement.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#263
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a disingenuous interpretation of what is essentially a peaceful worker's sit-in. That is literally what they are protesting for, so I fail to see how it is disingenuous. > This is a disingenuous character smear of anyone who decides to question the status quo. Perhaps you should "research" the difference between "status quo" and "factual". 10.6 billion people have gotten a covid vaccine, it would be pretty…

The current world population isn't even 8 billion yet [0]. That coupled with current vaccination rates across the world and the conflicting (and often suppressed) research about the covid vaccine efficacy, I am thoroughly confused. [0] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world [edit for additional thoughts]

My apologies, the number I gave was the number of doses given, total number of fully vaccinated people is 4.32B. Each dose is a sample because each dose is a chance for something to go wrong, right? Anyways, the way I stated it was wrong, so nice catch.

Looking at it either way, a sample size of 4.32 billion people or 10+ billion individual doses is more than enough to give a very clear signal if the vaccines were causing harm; harm from the vaccines would be as obvious as the sun, statistically speaking.

> ...the conflicting (and often suppressed) research...

What "research" regarding covid vaccine efficacy is being "suppressed", exactly? The only research that I see being suppressed, is the research that the vast majority of people that are dying of covid are unvaccinated. And it's being suppressed by the cruel FUD campaign led by the anti-vaxer crew, that, tragically, has taken so many of their own number.

I don't see much "conflicting research" regarding vaccine efficacy at all, it's well below the standard level of noise you get from medical studies. For instance, have you seen any reputable studies that point to unvaccinated people dying less often than vaccinated people of covid? Me neither. We know the vaccines provide significant protection from serious complications from covid, including death, we know the protection wanes over time, and we know boosters are extremely effective. Where exactly is the uncertainly here?

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#264

Canadians have a right to protest. Canadians also have a right to the enjoyment of their property. The former does not override the latter, and the latter was severely infringed upon by the occupiers. These protests caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. There is a $300M lawsuit against the occupiers in Ottawa, similar ones will happen against the occupiers of the Ambassador bridge. The bank accounts…

It's amazing to me the rhetoric used regarding people going honk honk, when just a year ago we were downplaying the burning and looting of cities, and brushing the deaths that happened in those protests under the rug.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked video has ~750K views and features Benjamin Dichter, one of the 3 convoy leaders, outlining 2 very realistic demands: 1. Abolish federal vaccine mandates for border crossing. 2. Abolish ArriveCAN - the app used to track health/vaccination status during border crossings. Both are very specific demands. Both will have close to zero effect on the actual COVID deaths. Both are within the federal government's j…

The video was made February 15th, weeks into the blockade, and long after it was painfully clear that the public was turning dramatically against the convoy. At this point the Premier of Ontario and the federal government were openly discussing measures to squash the occupation. A week earlier the organizers had quietly dropped their memorandum of understanding's insurrection demands. "Completely ignore the reasonabl…

In other words, the organizers managed to agree between themselves and come up with reasonable demands, but the government showed complete unwillingness to reason. So Benjamin Dichter showed himself as a better diplomat than Justin Trudeau.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semantics aside - the Act does allow for the suspension of civil liberties that should be troubling to everyone. The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of their bank accounts without a court order or any form of recourse is virtually unprecedented in Western society. Likewise, retroactively labelling a behaviour as a crime, then punishing individuals for it is explicitly against the Canadian Cha…

When a conversation starts with accusations of "martial law," you don't get to wiggle out of that by wringing over "semantics": "martial law" means something specific , and using it in the first place belies either an incorrect understanding or a dishonest attempt to portray the Canadian government's actions in terms that nobody can disagree with. > The ability for a government to unilaterally lock people out of thei…

> SARs[1]

Link? I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report but this describes a process where a bank makes a report to the feds, not a process where the feds make a report to the bank. And account closure is not mentioned.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you just missed my point" No, I didn't. You pointed out the number of votes between two parties to demonstrate mandate. Only the actual numbers betray a completely different situation. You don't get to casually claim that one whole set don't matter because it makes your story work better. "NDP since they basically condemned trudeau" Again you're speaking like you don't know how politics work in Canada. How else do y…

I'm sorry but when did I ever say that every liberal is for what's happening or that every conservative is against?! I literally said that I'm not assuming any level of support, as opposed to what the comment I was replying to did. My point was that it's ridiculous to pretend there is a consensus. Of course I know that a lot of conservatives support the measures and if anything I'm sure the majority of Bloc supporter…

"I literally said that I'm not assuming any level of support"

Your entire post was predicated on an assumption about the level of support.

"weirdly defensive"

It is neither defensive or weird. A lot of Americans in particular are grossly misinformed about {broadly gestures at almost everything related to this}, but they have very deep opinions. It's actually telling that you tried to portray the inverse (e.g. Canadians talking about America), when that simply isn't true: We are overwhelmed with American news and political happenings for time eternal, in media, news, social media, etc, where most Americans have a very superficial understanding of Canada for obvious, practical reasons. DHH's post panders to an alt-right crypto crowd, but to every Canadian it looks like ignorant clowning.

"You are also coming up with tons of ad-hoc explanations for everyone"

You're injecting a ridiculous number of strawmen. I argued against your statement that political positions on a vote = actual reasoned opinion. That has never, ever been the case in Canadian politics. No rational person expects it to be the case.

"agreeing wholesale with suspending the charter"

And with this statement, everything you've said on this entire topic has been completely discounted. The emergency act does not upset a single charter right. Not one. As with DHH ridiculous claims about martial law, it betrays that the speaker's hysterical take can be ignored as baseless rhetoric.

Further, the root post nowhere claimed "all Canadians support this". They noted that our base values are different and that many Americans aren't fully informed, and that is 100% true. As you've done with my posts, you're bizarrely spinning that out into something completely unsaid.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video was made February 15th, weeks into the blockade, and long after it was painfully clear that the public was turning dramatically against the convoy. At this point the Premier of Ontario and the federal government were openly discussing measures to squash the occupation. A week earlier the organizers had quietly dropped their memorandum of understanding's insurrection demands. "Completely ignore the reasonabl…

In other words, the organizers managed to agree between themselves and come up with reasonable demands, but the government showed complete unwillingness to reason. So Benjamin Dichter showed himself as a better diplomat than Justin Trudeau.

I am just in awe at this. Astonishing.

After a three week long insurrection based on profound ignorance, and thousands of instances of criminality, you think the government -- just as it was about to have the resources available to put it down -- should have shook hands and said "you win" to these people? And just to be clear, even if we though the army of QAnon aficionados would go for it, I assure you they would have expected amnesty.

No, I don't think so. It was *way* too late to suddenly try to eek a win out of this.

Re: I was wrong, we need crypto

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can also criminalize accepting Bitcoin for payment for goods, in which case you would have no choice but to convert back to dollars (and taxes will likely always be paid in dollars anyway)

And then there would be a black market, immediately. Prohibition tends to be exceptionally violent. The point being: using a decentralized currency makes authoritarianism harder. This is not exactly a radical idea: foreign currencies have very often been banned from use in dictatorships. Why people kick back on "internet money" being a tool to use against abusive governments is strange: It's more or less it's only re…

Regular people in dictatorships aren't hiding money in cryptocurrency, because they don't have money to stash away, usually. The rich in those societies may be, and they're likely rich through being affiliated with the dictator.

You aren't helping liberate the poor and desperate. You're helping oligarchs hide their money from domestic or international seizure after the dictator falls, and a new government steps in.

Post reply on HN