I guess I kind of agree with this, but Monero-related stuff is the exception for me.
Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
611–620 of 720 posts
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
He may not be, but the product has been. Same goes with Theo and OpenBSD. Hyper-productive people are often volatile. Putting up with it is a necessary tradeoff, as the systems they produce often fill a niche that nobody else will serve adequately.
Guys like Theo have a baseline to uphold and I think decades of dealing with the public on an open project with specific goals that need to be met would turn anyone sour. People respect him for his actual work though, like they used to with Torvalds before he got bought out by IBM. Drew I think is just kind of a dick who has a history of putting his personal crusades before delivering a product people want. I remembe…
Patrick is an unusual exception; I’d actually put people like Drew, Theo, and pre-corporate Linus in the midpoint. The opposite extreme of Patrick would be unfortunate cases like Reiser and Ian Murdock.
I think Drew suffers a little from lack of focus. I greatly appreciate his work on Harelang, sway, and aerc for instance, but these are quite far from his Sourcehut work. (I can see how aerc and Sourcehut dovetail with the plaintext email focus, at least.)
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The percentage of classical fiat used for crime is negligible, when compared with the percentage of blockhain fiat used for crimes. If the goal is to prevent crime then going after a currency based on percentage is stupid. Nobody cares about what percent, they care about what's actually happening and that's where the astronomically larger amount of fiat crime matters. >Moreover, classical fiat makes steps to make cr…
> Nobody cares about what percent, they care about what's actually happening and that's where the astronomically larger amount of fiat crime matters. I absolutely care. Classical money system has regulations that make crime like ransomware or (physical) kidnapping impractical. Cryptocrap enables them. The entire ransomware field became possible _just_ because of it. > Monero prevents mass surveillance which makes our…
If you don't care about privacy, then state your address, bank account balance, phone number, family members, and post photos of the inside of your house. Monero protects some of that information.
It's a human right to choose what information to reveal about yourself.
Crypto is not crap on the whole. Many coins are worthless and scams, but some improves payments and give people more freedom and privacy. Just like everything, understanding crypto requires nuance.
Of course any privacy tool will first be challenged by the bad actors caught using it. That's just the way it goes and is the same with Tor, secure devices like GrapheneOS. But we shouldn't take away peoples rights because of a few bad actors.
There's a vast ecosystem of legal services that accept and use Monero like Mullvad VPN and many listed on donatemonero.org.
Monero prevents ransomware because it prevents others from knowing how much you have. I agree that regular transparent crypto is problematic because of that lack of privacy which enables bad actors like kidnappers or oppressive governments. Monero is an important iteration on transparent crypto. There's a reason one of the "rules" of Monero" is never say how much you have.
I've made 100s of Monero transactions and none of them have been for illicit goods or any crime. They just were for protecting my privacy.
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49016139 .
Why? You destroyed the context and made it look like I'm griping about cryptocurrency and not the AI issue. Just delete the comment if you're going to do that.
> Why?
Because it set off a horrendous flamewar subthread, containing not a single substantive comment.
> Just delete the comment if you're going to do that.
We don't delete comments unilaterally. We made it clear where it was detached from so people could find the context if they wanted to.
You're welcome to post another reply that is not so clearly in breach of the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody cares about what percent, they care about what's actually happening and that's where the astronomically larger amount of fiat crime matters. I absolutely care. Classical money system has regulations that make crime like ransomware or (physical) kidnapping impractical. Cryptocrap enables them. The entire ransomware field became possible _just_ because of it. > Monero prevents mass surveillance which makes our…
If you don't care about privacy, then state your address, bank account balance, phone number, family members, and post photos of the inside of your house. Monero protects some of that information. It's a human right to choose what information to reveal about yourself. Crypto is not crap on the whole. Many coins are worthless and scams, but some improves payments and give people more freedom and privacy. Just like eve…
> If you don't care about privacy, then state your address, bank account balance, phone number, family members, and post photos of the inside of your house.
Nope. I'm fine with the protection that the classic legal system provides.
> Monero protects some of that information.
No, it doesn't. I don't use cryptocrap.
> Of course any privacy tool will first be challenged by the bad actors caught using it. That's just the way it goes and is the same with Tor, secure devices like GrapheneOS. But we shouldn't take away peoples rights because of a few bad actors.
The harm done by GrapheneOS and the harm that is being done every day by cryptocrap are nowhere comparable.
> I've made 100s of Monero transactions and none of them have been for illicit goods or any crime. They just were for protecting my privacy.
And by doing 100s of Monero transactions, you made a noticeable contribution to making the world worse. Congrats.
Go on, I'm still waiting for you to list the positive effects of crypto. It's been 12 years since it became mainstream, so positive effects should be visible by now. Has the world become more democratic? More privacy-oriented?
Perhaps smart contracts and unforgeable blockchains made new applications possible, and they became widespread? Like asset tracking or certificates of origin? Maybe NFTs transformed the art?
Nope. Nothing good came out of it.
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. It's not so much that there are rules, it's that the rules are decided by random popularity vibes. It's not clear what vibes they will be smoking tomorrow. The least they could do as a nonprofit is make users aware that a core tenet of the service is to promote/ban whatever content the community voting decides any given day, and hopefully what ideology they are following. Otherwise any serious person would t…
Literally every rule is decided by random popularity vibes. Name one that isn't?
> Literally every rule…
Imagine for a second if that were actually the case. Most rules are determined by physics, science, data, or something tangible. Food safety, aviation, electrical codes, even sports rules are based on math and statistics.
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather companies just provide me a service at a reasonable price. I don't need a corporation imposing it's ethics on me.
Yet they bend under fascist requests like current US administration.
Codeberg? Did they? I know large corporations do it because they fear commercial retaliation, but Codeberg is a registered German charity by German citizens living in Germany and has absolutely no reason to give a flying fuck what the US president thinks. Which is incredibly based.
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with Bitcoin alone using more energy than the entire countries of Argentina or the Netherlands Btw this particular comparison can be traced back to a single Guardian article from 2021/2022 or so It's a very weird comparison imho cause what they did (in the original article) was sort all the countries by energy usage, and notice that Bitcoin lies between Argentina and Netherlands. I thought a better comparison would…
> Now I'm not trying to argue that bitcoin doesn't waste a lot of energy, it totally does. Bitcoin doesn't waste energy, it uses energy to encode and secure the blockchain. The federal reserve (corrupt as it is) does not waste energy to print dollar bills, it is just part of the process of creation.
That's not correct. The complaint isn't about data processing energy, it's about the energy purposely wasted in the "how much energy can I waste today" e-dick contest that gives you the right to print new bitcoins. Of course everyone is wasting as much energy as they can.
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
That money had to have come from somewhere, whether it was taxpayers or individuals. What if I donated? Is it cool to just roll over and allow political groups to hijack a previously neutral service? Also there are other projects hosted there, and network effects involved.
Probably if you become a member you'll have more ability to discuss with the other members and the board and the operators, yes. Clearly they are setting limits on a case-by-case basis where needed. If something like GNOME was on Codeberg, they'd happily raise the storage quota for them. So they can also exempt you from the AI code rule if you have a really good reason, which you don't. They have noted somewhere (it'…
that note I just referenced is here: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
Re: Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the entire network probably has a smaller footprint than a single small/medium size bank What research or statistics can you suggest to bolster this argument?
While I can't confirm comparisons to a "small/medium size bank" specifically (cause I have no idea how), I can perhaps clarify a bit Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake in 2022, and it was initially expected to use only 1% of the energy it used when it was proof-of-work. Turned out they were under-estimating the savings. According to studies by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and the Crypto Carbon Ratings I…
There isn't really a technical difference that made PoS viable for Ethereum but not Bitcoin; it's a hard fork in either case. The differences are more cultural -
- For better or worse, Ethereum has more centralized leadership (mainly the EF) which helps coordinate upgrades. Hard forks happen pretty regularly, and don't typically risk fracturing the community, unless the changes are particularly controversial (see Ethereum Classic).
- PoS wasn't that controversial, since it was planned from the beginning (see the difficulty bomb). Some users still resisted the switch - see the EthereumPoW fork - but for the most part the community was on board.
- The Bitcoin community OTOH values ossification. It rarely accepts proposed hard forks as "still Bitcoin"; that has only happened a few times in its history. The community's response to most proposed hard forks is "interesting, but that's not Bitcoin, call it something else."
- The Bitcoin community is also more ideologically and economically invested in PoW, so a proposed PoS fork would be extremely controversial, and would fracture the community (at best, if it gained any traction at all).