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Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

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Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#171
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full iris images is exactly what I expect/am afraid of.

I think that hashes of the full iris images aren't much better.

It’s a little better. To be useful someone else has to use the same hashing algorithm. Assuming the hash isn’t usefully reversible.

A picture could work with any algorithm.

They’re both bad though.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have UBI at a country level if you finance it with government budget (through taxes)[1], but as a for-profit enterprise, there's no that's a good idea (for it to work at all, it must have a monetization strategy, and they all look dystopian) [1] it actually exist(ed) in France (see RMI/RSA, though the different governments recently added tons of bureaucracy to it as a way to deter people from getting it, ruin…

And you don't need a magic orb to do it. You can do it in the US through the mysterious buildings referred to as "unemployment offices" by changing the signs and opening twice as many. It would also be amazing to use these buildings to match employers and the unemployed, but that's obviously asking far too much of government.

[deleted]

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#173
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that the dataset is the most up to date version? Maybe some sort of globally distributed time-stamping mechanism? Oh hey look, it's a blockchain.

Or... the source of record can publish an xml file or something when there's updates to the signed diff... rss. No slow consensus model needed. If you aren't in an adversarial context with multiple publishers, you don't need blockchain.

> source of record

How is this published? On a single server somewhere? What country would you put it in? A friendly one I hope. Also one that won't block access to other countries that it might have petty disagreements with in the future. It might be a good idea for it to be replicated across a number of servers across the internet. We call those "nodes" in the blockchain space.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#174
post #71

I'm actually surprised how rapidly this went downhill exactly how people were warning it would.

Yeah, my take is that during the rise of the internet and mobile, tech earned a lot of social credit. But since then tech companies both large and small have been burning through that at a prodigious rate, especially social media, monopoly-seekers, and the trash fire that is crypto. If I had to sum up the new attitude of European regulators toward tech, it would be, "We're tired of your bullshit." I'm glad to see it.…

Tech hasn’t “burned through social capital”. The media has shifted from being positive/neutral regarding tech to actively hostile, mainly because tech has been increasingly approaching their turf.

Regulators follow public opinion, public opinion follows the media.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#175
post #45

I really don't want to have anything to do with crypto, and the fact that Sam Altman is pushing it in 2023 makes both him and OpenAI look sketchy. Especially crypto with a weird biometric eye scanner.

Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me. If I say "The founder of OpenAI is scanning people's eyeballs to build a database" that sets off real alarm bells.

> Yeah, if I talk to a 'normie' and explain that chatGPT and OpenAI are nefariously plotting regulatory capture most will roll their eyes at me.

You are supposed to preface it with how Altman is making AI services, selling them as AGI, and also painting AGI as a danger to the survival of humanity. Then, when they are baffled at why someone would sell something while describing it that way, you can walk them through regulatory capture and erecting barriers to competition.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would Worldcoin beta-test in Kenya vs SV if not in an attempt to fly under the radar of scrutiny Iris scanning is already widely used in the U.S. and hasn't received much scrutiny. It's in the news all the time, e.g. with the owners of Madison Square Garden using it to keep their political enemies from going to concerts. You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already. Even LinkedIn uses CLEAR to…

> You probably use it every time you get on an airplane already. False. More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy.

> More importantly, however, this is an example of the "you're already doing it so it's not a big deal" fallacy

I'm not saying it's not a big deal, I'm saying it hasn't gotten much scrutiny, at least relative to comparable innovations in the past. E.g. when airports introduced body scanners, Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about this called The Naked Crowd. Where's the equivalent scrutiny for iris scanners?

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#177
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He believes proof of humanity is vital in a world where AI can convincingly pass as human

So, making a buck creating a huge problem, and then making another buck working on the solution to that problem as a side-hustle. Boy, I'm really proud to be working in Tech in 2023...

> making a buck creating a huge problem, and then making another buck working on the solution to that problem as a side-hustle

Except he's doing neither of these. He's just talking about them while raising money.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#179
post #143
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He believes proof of humanity is vital in a world where AI can convincingly pass as human

I actually think his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up. It's not about humans asserting their humanness over some evil AGI/ASI machine, it's about sybil resistance. Malicious humans pretending to be thousands or millions of other humans.

> his actual concern here is humans stealing identities and running bots in order to farm any sort of UBI mechanism that gets set up

So exactly what's happening with Worldcoin right now [1].

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#180
post #71

I'm actually surprised how rapidly this went downhill exactly how people were warning it would.

Yeah, my take is that during the rise of the internet and mobile, tech earned a lot of social credit. But since then tech companies both large and small have been burning through that at a prodigious rate, especially social media, monopoly-seekers, and the trash fire that is crypto. If I had to sum up the new attitude of European regulators toward tech, it would be, "We're tired of your bullshit." I'm glad to see it.…

We are still going to have to work with people who had no qualms about working for five different breeds of charlatan. Some of them two or three breeds at once.

I once was contract to hire at a place that was skeevy. The management team was horrible and abusive, the most senior developer was defensive and cagey.

I said no because of the management situation, but I also wasn't happy that the putative lead had a side hustle that involved driving around the city looking for cell towers that would let him get away with sending spam SMS messages.

My current job, he and another person from that company were working for someone in the same building as us. They didn't seem to recognize me, and I wasn't going to remind them who I was.

What hurt the worst though was that I was replacing someone from the local community who I had a lot of respect for who recommended me for this role. He basically created a giant goodwill bonfire and lit up the night sky.

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