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Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

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Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#251

Post by pavlov »

random_kris wrote: post #223
victorbjorklund wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an argument against it. If they already solved the problem with mobile payments adding blockchain to the mix doesnt add any value.

Any good way to implement global payment network (mobile or not) that is not subject to government whims?

No, because money transfers are such a central locus of government interest everywhere in the world.

It’s like asking “any good way to avoid paying taxes?” You’ll definitely get lots of opinions, but you should also be cautious about taking the advice.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#252

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

dragonwriter wrote: post #220
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that. There's more to being a government than preventing people from using media of exchange that you haven't blessed. Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place.

> Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place. Yes, it would; neither form of the “U” in UBI includes free of borders in the sense used in the term, and reinterpreting that way and pretending its what the term means is just lazy equivocation.

I don't know what you mean. If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#253

Post by mrguyorama »

Hamuko wrote: post #187
rchaud wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to think Bond villains need to have a "satire" disclaimer to pre-empt future Stanford kids from thinking it's something to aspire to.

Alternative subtitle track that just displays "(this guy is the bad guy)" when the villain is visible on screen.

How can he be the villain, he has all the money so he must be the good guy!

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#254

Post by mrguyorama »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #169
NelsonMinar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone believe the UBI part is real? Or is it just part of the scam?

I used to defend crypto a lot (now just a little). Especially the UBI attempts. But no. World coin has always looked like a thinly veiled attempt to generate a biometric dataset which would later be used against its users. I just don't know who its audience was supposed to be. If you're suspicious enough of fiat to want this kind of escape hatch, how can you simultaneously be trusting enough to embrace a system that…

Because 90% of the people who got into crypto did not give a fuck about "trust" or any of the nonsense blockchains claim they do and only wanted to hit the lottery on the next coin going to the moon.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#255

Post by oh_sigh »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #76
sdenton4 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I liked the original idea behind this, and thought it was one of the few actually-interesting applications of crypto currency. If you can (somehow) solve the unique identity problem, you can design a Universal Basic Income using a crypto-currency as backing. The Unique ID problem isn't solved by the blockchain, though, so it ends up being a total mess.

Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem ridiculous but that's precisely what crypto is. An attempt to replace central banks and governments. Tech companies have grown very powerful, and they see an opportunity to create a world-wide "private government" and they're going for it. This won't be the l…

Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#256

Post by dragonwriter »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #252
dragonwriter wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, if borders had anything to do with it, it was never UBI in the first place. Yes, it would; neither form of the “U” in UBI includes free of borders in the sense used in the term, and reinterpreting that way and pretending its what the term means is just lazy equivocation.

I don't know what you mean. If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.

> If you're denying people access to the system based on where they happen to be, it's not universal.

“Universal” seems to be a later construction, it was originally “unconditional”, and in both cases the writings on it for many years under either name made it clear that the reference was principally freedom from means- and behavior-testing, contrary to status-quo welfare programs, but that it would target a population based on (exact scope differs in particular proposals) residency, citizenship, and/or age. Not surprised that the “no borders” crowd has seen it differently, and their version certainly is a valid instance of the general idea, but they don’t get to rewrite history and narrow the scope of the broader concept to their new version.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#257

Post by mrguyorama »

kstrauser wrote: post #218
px43 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.allstatenewsroom.com/news/tax-and-government-fra... > Tax and Government Fraud Cases Spiked 68% in 2022 > The IRS flagged $5.7 billion in tax fraud in 2022, and there were nearly 8 million reports of suspicious tax-season activities.

From https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book : "During Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, the IRS collected more than $4.9 trillion in gross taxes, processed more than 262.8 million tax returns and other forms, and issued more than $641.7 billion in tax refunds." So 5.7B is about .1% of the IRS's transactions that year. That's also less than it could possibly cost to deploy and maintain Worldcoin.

The IRS is better at preventing fraudulent transactions than most credit card processors and fraud prevention providers. I know they have a more restricted system so it's probably easier than credit card fraud, but it's still at least an order of magnitude.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#258

Post by beardedman »

pessimizer wrote: post #186
beardedman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the global south Care to elaborate what you mean by "the global south"? EDIT: Downvoted for asking a question? Did all the StackOverflow mods come to HN?

You were downvoted for not googling "the global south" before asking. It means you think that the time of others is less valuable than your own.

Yea, it was a rhetorical question.

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#259

Post by kemotep »

px43 wrote: post #228
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will soon be able to use their iriscodes to reclaim credentials that they sold, and once people start doing that, the market for re-sold credentials will drop to approximately zero. Is the obvious related problem this solution brings forth supposed to go unsaid? (Criminals don't buy something they can steal.)

Okay, so what's the attack scenario here? Imagine we live in a future where Worldcoin is ubiquitous, all the hardware/software is open source. Several orb operators exist in every city in the world, and operators have a non-trivial amount of WLD tokens staked to ensure good behavior. Misbehaving orbs have their keys and subkeys revoked at the first sign of illicit usage. Maybe a criminal kidnaps 10 people, then steal…

So if we start with your premise, the attack I can see being a concern is being able to deny people access to Worldcoin and burning their accounts/tokens by maliciously attacking an orb. If keys can be revoked because of illicit usage, someone could generate a key at the orb they wish to attack and act maliciously. Sybil attack, or attempt fraudulent transactions, or whatever behavior triggers burning all the keys tied to an orb. Do this before an election (if worldcoin is used for voting) or before the UBI is dispersed for the month and you could disrupt a lot.

How does Worldcoin provably know that an attacker is not using a dead person’s keys?

Re: Police raid Worldcoin warehouse in Nairobi

#260

Post by simonw »

mcpar-land wrote: post #233
shwaj wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation requested re: Altman saying current offerings are AGI. When I search, I see things like “there may be a path to AGI”.

the current 'normie' understanding of ChatGPT and other current LLMs like Bard is not that they are stochastic parrots that can complete sentences by probabilities, it's that they are 'stupid AGI.' And if we give them more funding and more training, eventually they will become 'smart AGI.' OpenAI markets their product exactly this way, focusing on how ChatGPT can 'write code' (it cannot) or 'write poetry' (it cannot)…

Can you expand on your statement that ChatGPT cannot write code? That doesn't match my experience with it.
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