181–190 of 211 posts
It is funny that a man so obsessed with privacy, anonymity and his physical security still uses online dating apps. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappe...
You sound confused; I'm the author of the article, not the subject.
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I prefer to use security by obesity. Meaning I won't get any Tinder dates so my accounts are safe.
Overweight people are worthy of, and capable of, finding love. I know your comment is in jest but it also propagates negativity in a way that is corrosive to others’ self-worth. For those who read your comment and feel bad that the humorous angle is reality to them… it isn’t. Don’t let the world make you feel bad about yourself. For those who read it and get a chuckle about fat people… your world view may benefit fro…
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People tried ransomware before cryptocurrencies. Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling. And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.
Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm ? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering. If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms. As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type…
If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
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There are indeed cases where transactions involve unavoidable risks, and in some of those cases it is best to force the seller to assume those risks rather than the buyer. (I'm not sure why you've put "risk" in scare quotes; as my examples show, these are real risks.) In other cases, like when I pay the rent for my apartment, or when I sold a used car to a body shop, it would be better for the buyer to assume those r…
I’m sorry but the vast majority of risk is sellers, always has been, always will be. They may not make up the bulk of fraud now, but that’s precisely because we have these rules. Your links to checks are fantastic. Who the hell uses checks any more? Wow. Cryptocurrency precisely shifts the risk to the buyer, their recourse is gone if the goods they get are substandard. The imbalance of power between merchants and con…
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That’s not an issue in my country where fees are limited. In your civilised society I will never, ever use a new merchant or a small merchant. One vendor that promises easy refunds would be the only place I would ever shop. Small vendors and new vendors can go hang. Hell, it might just kill internet shopping all together. In your civilised society, small business is f*cked. In your civilised society a person who has…
> In your civilised society I will never, ever use a new merchant or a small merchant. One vendor that promises easy refunds would be the only place I would ever shop. Small vendors and new vendors can go hang. Hell, it might just kill internet shopping all together. What if that merchant was your friend? Or someone you knew personally? What if the merchant was recommended by someone you trust, like how small busines…
Well that’s rather the point, unscrupulous merchants have been a problem for millennia.
> Otherwise, yes, you're right, you shouldn't buy things from people you don't know and/or don't trust, even with the ability to request a chargeback
Goodbye internet shopping then, massive restraint of trade incoming.
Consumers are not blameless, but the power imbalance and the ability of merchants to take the money and run has echoed through time, it is disproportionate. The answer is not to kill trade by removing protections because that benefits neither party.
Your act may have been significant in the US, the UK had a consumer credit act in July of that same year which sets out the responsibilities of parties to a loan, which credit card providers are. However that is not the totality as such systems exist beyond credit arrangements and they exist explicitly for consumer protection from unscrupulous merchants.
(Edit - Tbh in your world I see a marketplace like Amazon emerging, that has clawback contracts with its sellers, and provides similar one-sided refund facilities to consumers as current cards. Little would practically change, except that there would be even less room for competition)
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Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm ? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering. If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms. As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type…
0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining. If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
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0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining. If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.
A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world.
It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.
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I’m sorry but the vast majority of risk is sellers, always has been, always will be. They may not make up the bulk of fraud now, but that’s precisely because we have these rules. Your links to checks are fantastic. Who the hell uses checks any more? Wow. Cryptocurrency precisely shifts the risk to the buyer, their recourse is gone if the goods they get are substandard. The imbalance of power between merchants and con…
It seems that you are becoming upset enough about this conversation that you are losing the ability to either consider the limits of your own knowledge or understand my comments well enough to respond to them. I'm sorry I upset you; that wasn't my intention.
Your idea that cryptocurrency would solve your friend’s situation is just plain wrong. It might have solved it for one party, but it does push the fraud risk onto the buyer. If your friend had sold a laptop to an honest buyer, but the laptop died as soon as it left the house, or was of lower spec than advertised, the buyer would have been out of luck.
I’m not sure why you think pointing this out indicates that I’m upset, I can only presume this is tone trolling.
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I once asked about the best way to exchange a significant amount of crypto in a public FB group (I know, poor opsec). That night, someone on the other side of the world shared a random PDF with me. I was smart enough not to touch that bad juju PDF, but I wonder if it was an attempt to hack me. Anyone know?
> I was smart enough not to touch that bad juju PDF, but I wonder if it was an attempt to hack me. Anyone know? There's no way anyone can answer that unless you share the PDF for analysis (and I couldn't even answer then).
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Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.
There is a whole world of difference between heating homes across the planet, and running a network that can do 7 transactions a second. A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world. It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.
As for "7 transactions per second", sure, 7 on-chain transactions with the current block size. You don't need them for things like buying a cup of coffee. So this FUD is somewhat outdated.