Absolutely. Anything but Microsoft GitHub.

Codeberg is at: https://codeberg.org/

Not exactly an answer to your question (sorry), but perhaps it’s a good reason to consider GitLab instead.

Agreed, but it still feels somewhat inconsiderate (at least), and the only reason they can get away with doing it this way is because of their size.

I mean, it really feels like they decided they finally have a good cover for screwing over small, independent e-mail clients.

App Passwords are not going away:
https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/154305711/less-secure-apps-your-google-account-termination-date-of-may-30th-2022

So it’s not quite as bad as “blocking all third party mail clients”. Still, a bit of a dick move.

Look, cryptobros have been pushing cryptocurrencies using cherry-picked “arguments” for years. I don’t see why this can only work one way?

On a more serious note, I am quite tired of the moving of goalposts practiced by cryptocurrency shills. “Oh, no, that only applies to some coins, not all of them!”, “hey, that one also only affects some blockchains!”, “no no, you can’t say that, there’s this <edge case> coin out there that happens to not have this one specific problem”.

Somehow problems they point out with the financial sector are supposed to apply to the whole sector, but problems with cryptocurrencies are only ever relevant to one very specific coin and in no way should reflect on the whole scene.

Give me a break. 🙄

Also, nice evasion there, just ignoring the main part of my post, which was: the fact that some other industry happens to generate emissions doesn’t make it okay to create a completely new source of emissions.

This is hardly a reason to add more to that, is it?

• Johnny, everyone’s trying to clean up and you’re making more mess!
• Yeah, but Adam also made a mess!

Seriously. 🙄

Plus, the financial sector can process thousands of transactions globally per second. Bitcoin, on the other hand, about (checks notes) seven.

Tekst propozycji:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2022%3A209%3AFIN&qid=1652451192472

Uwaga, długie.

W telegraficznym skrócie, kluczowy problematyczny fragment wprowadza nakaz wdrożenia przez producentów smartfonów lub operatorów usług typu Signal “algorytmów”, które “identyfikowały” by treści (zdjęcia, filmy) pokazujące wykorzystywanie seksualne osób nieletnich.

Apple testowało swój NeuralHash w tym celu:
https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Technical_Summary.pdf

Oczywiście błyskawicznie okazało się, że nietrudno wygenerować kolizje:
https://github.com/AsuharietYgvar/AppleNeuralHash2ONNX/issues/1

Co oznacza, że jeśli taki system byłby wdrożony, ktoś mógłby wysłać komuś, kogo nie lubi, niewinnie wyglądające zdjęcie, które miało by ten sam NeuralHash co jakieś znane zdjęcie zawierające pornografię dziecięcą. Apple flaguje, bagiety wbijają, elo.

To oczywiście bardzo płytkie podsumowanie na szybko. Ale generalnie to jest przypadek “think of the children” i magicznego myślenia o technologii.

Bitcoin is not a magic bullet to solve greed.

It’s way worse than that. Cryptocurrencies are a way to supercharge greedy and corrupt people, by giving them a powerful unregulated tool to play with. And all at a tiny cost of emitting thousands of tons of CO2 at a time when parts of India are already starting to become uninhabitable.

Thank you. I dropped into this bad habit, this is a much-welcome prod to shake it off.

Thanks!

The more I think of it, the more I come to the conclusion that cryptobros looked at the banking system and broader financial sector, correctly figured out there are a bunch of serious problems with them, and then misidentified the underlying problem as technology used instead of greed.

They are basically focusing implementation details instead of figuring out how to fix the actual source of the problem.

Yes there are risks with everything, and if its too risky for you thats okay. Others will keep using it.

Can they then please not make a big thing out of losing everything because of gambling in a cryptocassino? And maybe please do not ask the Fed to step in?

Can they please stop appropriating artists’ works, or activists’ faces?

That’s what really gets me going. I don’t care what cryptobros do with their money and if they want to put it in a machine that spits out random amounts on the other end, be my guest. But can they please stop insisting on affecting everyone else in the world?

I thought this forum is about technology, and not religion.

Cryptocurrencies etc are religion at this stage, debating cryptobros is eerily similar to debating religious fanatics. You get a recital of the “truths of faith”, and any scratching off the surface and pointing out how they are demonstrably untrue gets people angry and start calling you names.

Plenty of threads here over the last few weeks that prove it.

Not that I know of, but if I find one, I will post it.

Has intrinsic value due to scarcity, like a gold-standard currency (as opposed to today’s fiat currencies).

In other words, it’s designed to provide pay-off to those who jump-in early, as long as they convince more people to jump in, and assuming they get out early enough.

So it can’t be devalued or manipulated by a central bank.

Well, I don’t what we call a thing that manipulates them. Sure, it’s not called a “central bank”. But clearly cryptocurrencies can be manipulated:

• on a blockchain level (example, another example, and [https://web3isgoinggreat.com/single/juno-accidentally-transfers-36-million-in-seized-funds-to-inaccessible-wallet-address](Juno is thinking of doing this a second time in a row))
• on voting power level (here, for example);
• on “we will block you from doing any business” level, blacklisted wallets are a thing.
• and on monetary “create money out of thin air” level — Tether always claimed that it’s backed 1:1 with cash; well, it isn’t.

Not to mention manipulation by dudebros like Elon Musk, whose one tweet can just send cryptocurrencies up or down like a roller-coaster.

You don’t need to hold physical coins, or ask a 3rd party (like a bank) to store your money for you

And yet pleny of cryptocurrency people ask 3rd parties to store their assets for them. Which leads to pain.

Also, with cash you also also technically don’t need physical coins. Banknotes are a thing, you know. 😜

Can be send instantly anywhere in the world, without going through expensive money-transfer agents

Well, as long as you pay the exorbitant transaction/gas fees (which are there because the supply of particular cryptocurrency is capped, and so some form of rewarding miners is needed, apparently), and if you can afford to wait sometimes days for the transaction to be confirmed.

Money cannot be created out of nothing. If you want to loan somebody money, it has to really exist.

I mentioned Tether above, in that exact context. Consider the following:

Tether only holds a part (a “fraction”) of the actual hard cash they would need to back it 1:1 with USD. You know how much? A whole 2.9%, last time they produced any numbers on it, as far as I can see. Everything else is commercial paper, bonds, etc. They are literally gambling on the stock market with their supposed “backing cash”. This is basically what the Big Banks were doing before the 2008 crash, by the way.

Congratulations, you just invented (badly) fractional reserve banking. One of the core things cryptobros pinky-promised never to do. 🤣

No wonder people lost their minds when Tether de-pegged by roughly 5% this week!

Oh and by the way: Tether was in turn used to manipulate Bitcoin prices.

If all this is not “creating money out of nothing”, I don’t know what is. Think about it: one of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there, and pretty damn important one, literally just goes “I promise, just trust me” on the whole “every USDT is backed 1:1 by USD” thing, and everyone is just, you know, fine with that.

There are multiple important benefits. They may not all be important for you right now, but saying it doesn’t solve any problems at all is just ridiculous.

So far you have not named a single problem that cryptocurrencies actually solve. You mentioned a bunch of features some claim they presumably have, but not a single actual solved problem. It’s like saying “cars are great, they have wheels, and you don’t need a bus, and they come in all sorts of colors, too!” in response to a question “what problem do cars solve?”

The people who say it’s a ponzi scheme are people who don’t know what ponzi schemes are.

Well, Financial Times might actually have a reasonably good understanding what a Ponzi scheme is. And so, here we are. The whole article is basically this scene from The Office, and it’s finger-lickin’ good.

You shouldnt think of crypto only as an investment.

Oh not at all. I mostly think of it as a scam, with some Hoggish Greedly (ever watched Captain Planet?) type greed-induced crawling environmental disaster bolted onto it.

Have you ever sent money to someone outside the EU? Its very expensive, and takes a few days.

Sure. But I am sure we can find solutions that do not require buying into Ponzi schemes, if we just decide to focus on that, instead of on shilling said Ponzi schemes. 🤷‍♀️

I honestly don’t think they solve any problems, at all. I have not seen any proof they actually do.

They’re a great way to make a quick buck if you get in early enough, just like any pyramid/ponzi.

Though it does seem it’s not early enough anymore. 🤷‍♀️

I think we mostly violently agree here.

One thing I’ll add is that banning Trump from Twitter is not a “solution”, it’s harm reduction. Nobody is saying the problem “went away”. And in the end it doesn’t matter why Musk would un-ban Trump. The end result is the same, and so he’s actions would either be willfully malicious or woefully ignorant.

do people like trump do more harm with a live twitter account vs banning them which polarizes their followers even more which leads to more harm? i have no idea

The consensus is: yes, platforming alt-right authoritarians like Trump leads to more harm, including more people radicalized, and more people silenced by abuse they and their followers dish out on such platforms.

as for musk, did he specifically personally single out trump for unbanning? if yes, that is very troubling.

Yes he did, in the article he talks specifically about Trump.

or did he talk about having very few permbans and journalists asked about specific cases including trump, and musk said that case falls under the general reasons he already gave re. min permbans? if yes, we need to wait a bit longer to see where he really stands imo

The problem is not that Company X decides to ban a person or platform a person. The problem is that such a decision by Company X has such gigantic consequences. And that comes directly from the fact that Twitter is a centralized walled-garden monopoly.

Think of it this way: if any e-mail provider (even Gmail) “banned Trump”, that would be way less of an “issue”. Why? Because there are many other mail servers he can go set up an account on. So this particular e-mail provider’s decision is no longer “censorship” really, it’s “I really don’t want to do business with that toxic person”.

And that’s where we need to get to with social media. Centralization is a danger to democracy.

Mill’s Methods.