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TootSweet , to technology in Bitcoin is Stupid and Does Not Deserve an Emoji (blog post)

Cryptocurrency is speedrunning ruining everything. We might as well have a laugh at the cryptobros’ expense in the meantime.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

I loved the concept at first, the idea of a decentralized currency all handled by encryption, and transactions permamently stored in a public ledger for all to see.

Then the cryptobros and the scammers caught wind of it and it’s all downhill from there.

shortwavesurfer ,

Scammers use the technology because it actually works and does what it says it does. And criminals and scammers and such are generally the first ones to adopt a new technology. Such as bank robbers adopting the automobile in order to get away faster.

TootSweet ,

If you want the name of a payment techology that isn’t snake oil, isn’t blockchain-based, isn’t a cult, doesn’t claim to be a currency, doesn’t work on proof-of-work or proof-of-stake, but actually does provide certain privacy guarantees for your basic purchasing needs, is cryptographically secure, and can be used with only FOSS, I recommend looking into GNU Taler.

The only downside is that it’s not really supported anywhere at all yet. But I do hope it becomes a real thing some day.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Thanks, I’ll read on it :)

radamant ,

Please describe how I can send the money to my mom in Russia (disconnected from SWIFT) with GNU Taler today. I’ll wait.

TootSweet ,

I don’t know how I could possibly have been more explicit about it not yet being ready for any real-world use cases than I was.

radamant ,

It will never be ready. It doesn’t even make sense. To transact with real fiat like the US dollar, you’ll have to go through an official on-ramp and an off-ramp of the respective government. And to do an international transaction you’ll have to use one of the widely accepted systems like SWIFT. GNU Taler doesn’t appear to address anything like that. Anyhow, my comment was made with the premise of this whole thread in mind, i.e. “Bitcoin is stupid” or “snake oil”. Yet there’s no alternatives to what crypto provides. So is it that stupid after all?

explodicle ,

How wasteful!

Anyhow, today I’m going to resume using a currency backed by oil and nukes, which encourages consumption on purpose. I will then either exploit workers by investing in a for-profit business, or get poorer.

But someday, in the future, economics will work the way I expect them to. That’s when I’ll switch to something better!

iopq ,

Russia has had oil and nukes and it didn’t stop the ruble from collapsing in the 90s

Maybe reexamine your assumptions

explodicle ,

Oil and nukes won’t stop the dollar from collapsing either…

index ,

lol the downvotes. your mom is clearly evil and doesn’t deserve any money

shortwavesurfer ,

Exactly. With Monero, she gets it in seconds and no one can stop it.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Yea, that is interesting! I don’t really understand a lot of it though. Wonder how censorship-resistant it can be, and whether the receiver would be able to cash it out anonymously.

TootSweet ,

I’m not an expert on it, but I’ve done a certain amount of study on it.

I’m pretty sure there are no privacy guarantees for money receivers. Merchants/sellers would still be identifiable by banks and governments and such. So Taler isn’t what anyone selling heroin or doing murder for hire would want to be using as an accepted payment method. (At least not any more so than credit/debit card transactions will help the seller with keeping their doings secret.)

But Taler can keep the buyers’ identity secret. Unless you’re doing things in ways that reveal information about yourself, your bank and your government wouldn’t know you were buying fursuits even if they knew the merchant was selling fursuits.

So all that to say that no, the merchant couldn’t cash out anonymously.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

What I don’t understand is whether it is like “Taler is obtained and cashed out only in a bank, but the link between two events is unknown” or if Taler can change hands during said “link”.

If the former - I really hope it gets implemented as a card replacement, but it would need to coexist with something like Monero (which is what I use now) that is more akin to cash. But I really hope that somehow non-blockchain full-on “digital cash” could one day be invented, so wonder if this could be it :)

TootSweet ,

How I understand it is:

  • You go to your bank (or use a webapp or whatever) who knows who you are and get them to initiate a withdrawl from your bank account to your Taler wallet in the amount of, say $100.
  • The balance in your Taler wallet goes up by $100. The bank also decrements your bank account by $100 and puts that $100 in an escrow holding intending to pay it to whatever recipient(s) can provide cryptographic proof that you gave them Taler.
  • You go to a merchant and pay out of that $100 Taler balance $9 for a cheeseburger and fries.
  • The merchant receives $9 in Taler from you and checks with your bank that that $9 hasn’t already been spent previously before concluding the payment process and giving you your receipt and burger.
  • You now have a burger and fries and your Taler balance is $91.
  • But the merchant doesn’t learn anything about your identity in the process. But they do have proof that your bank has $9 in escrow earmarked for them (the merchant) specifically.
  • And your bank doesn’t know which of their customers to which they’ve ever given Taler is the one buying from the merchant in question. They just know that of the total sum of Taler they’ve issued that hasn’t been collected yet, $9 is earmarked for such-and-such merchant/burger joint.
  • The merchant can settle up any time, but theoretically the bank can charge per-transaction fees. In order to minimize fees, it behooves the merchant to batch up settlements. The merchant can claim actual USD for every dollar that was used at that establishment by customers via Taler over, say, the last week or whatever in one big settlement batched transaction.

I’m leaving out some details, but that should give you a decent idea of how things work with Taler.

Now, as for this bit:

if Taler can change hands during said “link”.

That, I’m not sure of. It might be that you can transfer Taler from your wallet to someone else’s wallet (that they could then spend) without any identities being revealed, though they wouldn’t be able to get real USD or whatever without working with your bank which would generally insist on confirming their identity. But I’d think in order for the recipient in that situation to know that they actually had real Taler and not Taler that you had already spent and that wouldn’t actually work if they tried to spend it or cash it in, they’d have to make basically an API call to your bank, though unless the bank blocked all traffic from every VPN and traffic anonymizer (like Tor or I2p) in existence, I see no reason why it couldn’t be done in a way that preserved the recipient’s anonymity.

So yeah. Not sure. But even if that bit isn’t a thing, I still want Taler to take off.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Ah, so probably would not work to evade censorship/sanctions. I would REALLY love to use such a thing instead of my card though.

index ,

isn’t blockchain-based, doesn’t work on proof-of-work or proof-of-stake

These things weren’t introduced as a gimmick they are used to solve specific problems.

unautrenom , (edited )

The only downside is that it’s not really supported anywhere at all yet. But I do hope it becomes a real thing some day.

AFAIK there’s a lot of talk about making GNU Taler the basis for the ‘digital Euro’ which is curently being debated at the EU Parliement.

deafboy ,
@deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

GNU Taller is pretty fragile, though. One bank issues unbacked tokens and the credibility of the whole system goes down the drain. It’s the current financial system, just rebranded. Also, it promotes taxation which automatically makes it a cult & scam.

TootSweet , (edited )

One bank issues unbacked tokens

  1. The Taler protocol has bank auditors built-in.
  2. Your hypothetical would just as much apply to existing debit cards.
  3. Unbacked tokens. You mean like Tether? (Let alone Terra.)

Also, it promotes taxation which automatically makes it a cult & scam?

The fuck? How does Taler “promote taxation?”

Fuckin’ Libertarians.

deafboy ,
@deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

Unbacked tokens. You mean like Tether?

Exactly like Tether. USDT was never backed 1:1 by USD. They don’t even try to deny it anymore. They admit it’s backed by “various assets, including BTC”, which smells like a market manipulation.

How does Taler promote taxation?

“Customers can stay anonymous, but merchants can not hide their income through payments with GNU Taler. This helps to avoid tax evasion and money laundering.”

TootSweet ,

Thank you for being honest about being pro-tax-evasion and pro-money-laundering.

Melvin_Ferd ,

Did they or did a bunch of media get pushed that told us all what these crypto bros were doing like shitting on beaches and taking our jobs.

Seriously though I’m picking up on a trend that a lot media has a greater influence on opinion then I’ve ever seen before

blind3rdeye ,

I liked the idea for awhile as well. But for me, learning about the “proof of work” underpinning is what changed my mind. That - and the fact that cryptocurrency does not actually have any of the strengths that it claims to have. It’s definitely and interesting idea… but in practice it’s all just scams and incentivised waste.

deafboy ,
@deafboy@lemmy.world avatar

That’s interesting. I’ve initially written it off as a scam. Until I’ve learned about the proof-of-work.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

Bitcoin is over 15 years old now, that's not a particularly fast speedrun.

index ,

I would rather point my finger at wall street or financial institutions not at the tools that offers a viable option to avoid these

Disk , to science_memes in Geography 101

By a continuation of this logic Izeland mislabeled on my map as “Spain”

MicrondeMMMMMMM , to lemmyshitpost in LinkedIn
@MicrondeMMMMMMM@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Linkedin is the worse social media out there even twitter isn’t that bad compared to it.

Quereller ,

Strangely enough, in my bubble it is quite descent. People often posting interesting research and advances in the field.

MicrondeMMMMMMM ,
@MicrondeMMMMMMM@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I mean every social media has good and bad places ofc but for me linkedin has been the worse, idk it felt like I was looking at my bosses jokes and forced to laugh otherwise they’d fire me.

missingno , to gaming in Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of August 4th
@missingno@fedia.io avatar

Same as last week.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - I'm back on my bullshit again. Uzuki arc was fun, but when it comes time for bracket I gotta lock in. And by lock in, I mean still play like a clown.

Splatoon 3 - Didn't have too much time to practice this week, but had one good session. Really trying to work on more actionable callouts, coordinating with our specials and planning a push together rather than merely announcing things after they happen.

Persona 4 Golden - Still just post-Kanji dungeon. At the rate I am going I will finish this game... someday.

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story - Man, forgot how annoying it was that you have to always go for weapon breaks against bosses or else you miss their blueprint forever. Also, RHDN shutdown has me wondering, if/when the third game's translation patch ever gets finished, where do I even look to find out about it?

Slay the Spire - I can quit any time I want, I swear.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came dangerously close to losing my Master 1 rank on Soul, but got a few wins so I'm safeish now. I know I'm too reckless and I'm trying to work on that. I did play one of the best games I've had at club this week, had the discipline to fold several tempting hands and it turned out to be correct every time. Sometimes protecting second place through smart play is more satisfying than lucking into first.

seliaste ,
@seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I had a lot of problems finiahing Persona 4 too after the Kanji dungeon but I think it was worth it

Dremor , (edited ) to games in ROMhacking.net shuts down after 20 years; database has been moved to the Internet Archive
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

Hi there.

I’m a bit hesitant about allowing or not linking to the website archives.
For the time being, and while we discuss about it among the mods, I’d like to ask you to refrain from posting any link to said archive.
If we decide to allow it, I’ll restore the comments containing said links I’ve removed.

Thank you for your understanding.

Final Edit :

After carefully considering both sides arguments, and talking about it with LM admins and the mod team, we decided to keep the direct links removed.

LM allows meta-discussions around piracy, but not linking to possible pirated content. As we do not have the means and resources to check the whole 12Go dump to make sure no there is no copyrighted content in one of those Rom Hacks. More information here.

Rom Hacking is a gray area which is, depending on your location and/or interpretation of your local law, allowed or not. LW is under EU Jurisdiction (see that part of the TOS), and has to abide with rather restrictive law on that matter. There is unfortunately no broad “fair use” exception in that jurisdiction, only specific exceptions listed here. None of them seem to be applicable to Rom Hacks, which mean that they are to be considered potentially illegal under LW jurisdiction.

catloaf ,

From what I see in the archive link I posted, it only contains patches, not playable games, neither original nor patched. You need a copy of the game already to make any use of it.

Pixelguin ,

That’s correct. The entire archive is only about 12GB; it couldn’t possibly contain the full games.

Dremor , (edited )
@Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t need to have the full game to be considered as piracy. Anything allowing to break a DRM could be considered as such.

Edit :

I understand that most of you do not agree with that, and I do too, but as a mod I have to put my feelings on the matter aside and put the community and lemmy.world interest first. If we get DMCA (or the EU equivalent), consequences could be quite significant for this community or the server itself.

You can find a more specific explanation of my stance here :

lemmy.world/comment/11587381

hamid , (edited )

deleted_by_author

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  • Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise.
    In the EU, things are a bit different. US Fair Use is quite open ended, with a lot of room for interpretation. In the case of EU copyright laws, the list of exclusions is explicitly listed in Information Society Directive Article 5.
    In my opinion this could fall into either art. 5.3(d), art. 5.3(i), or art. 5.3(k), but I’m no copyright law specialist. I do have one among my friends, but she kinda got a child last week, I’m not gonna bother her for that 😅.

    hamid , (edited )

    deleted_by_author

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  • Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    First, please take into consideration that lemmy.world website and organisation is bound to EU laws (as stated in the TOS). As such, in the current case the EU copyright laws, that are as previously stated, far more restrictive than the US ones.

    As you stated, the objective of ROM patches is to modify copyrighted material. One of the right protected by copyright in the EU is the right to modify a software.

    By default, if no licence is given, software is considered as being under the most restrictive licence available (even if the source code is freely available), which means, in this case, an “all rights reserved” licence, which prohibit software modification.

    In the EU, third party patches are considered as derivative works, and requires an explicit authorisation from the copyright holder to be published and used on copyrighted material. Some exceptions exists, as previously stated, but applying them here would be quite far fetched.

    For now, and while I keep researching on the application of EU copyright laws to try to find a flaw that would allow me to authorize those links, I’ll have to keep those links removed.

    The comments would be restored if the link are removed by the comment authors.

    hamid , (edited )

    deleted_by_author

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  • Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ll take a look tomorrow. I’m UTC+2 (I just can’t sleep right now 😅), so I’m not yet in the required state of mind to go and check all of that.

    doctortran ,

    If it’s a romhacking site, it wont have the actual ROMs, just the patches. It never would have survived 20 years if it had been hosting ROMs.

    Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    You got a good point here. I’ll take that into consideration.

    Mango ,

    Saying you’re cross usually means angry.

    Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh, my bad 😂

    I meant that I was hesitant.

    As you can see, English is not my main language.

    Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

    Two Irish nuns were sitting in their car at a traffic light when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulled up alongside.

    “Hey, show us your tits you bloody penguins!” shouted one of the drunks.

    The Mother Superior turns to Sister Margaret and says “I don’t think they know who we are. Show them your cross!”

    So Sister Margaret rolls down her window and shouts, “Sod off you little fucking wankers before I get out and rip your goddam balls off!”

    Sister Margaret looks back at the Mother Superior and asks, “Was that cross enough?”.

    Dremor ,
    @Dremor@lemmy.world avatar

    🤣

    tal , to technology in US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...
    @tal@lemmy.today avatar

    No PGP support

    Why would the mail provider need to support it? I mean, if they provide some sort of webmail client, maybe it doesn’t do PGP, but I sure wouldn’t be giving them my PGP keys anyway.

    I haven’t used any of them, but I don’t think that you can go too far wrong here, since you have your own domain. Pick one, try it for non-critical stuff for a month or two, and if you don’t like it, switch. As long as you own the domain, you’re not locked in. If you do like it, then just start migrating.

    The main differentiating factors I can think of are (a) service reliability, (b) risk that someone breaks in and dumps client mail, but it’s hard for me to evaluate the risk of that at a given place. And © how likely it is that other parties spam-block mail from them.

    I’d look for TLS support for SMTP and IMAP; that may be the norm these days. The TLS situation for mail is a little unusual compared to most protocols, where on a new connection, some servers initially use the non-encrypted version and then upgrade via STARTTLS.

    If you intend to leave your mail on their server rather than just using it as a temporary holding point until you fetch it, you might look into what their storage provided is.

    I’d also see what the maximum size of any individual email that they permit is.

    furrowsofar OP ,

    I could be handy to read you mail on the web client. Depends on how secret you want your PGP key, how much you trust your provider. I would argue that in most cases it would be better for the provider to manage the keys then to have no one use PGP which is what we mostly have now.

    dhork , to technology in Bitcoin is Stupid and Does Not Deserve an Emoji (blog post)

    Maybe we don’t need a Bitcoin emoji, but we absolutely need a Doge emoji.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Lol, doge

    driving_crooner ,
    @driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

    🐶 there’s already one

    shortwavesurfer , to technology in Bitcoin is Stupid and Does Not Deserve an Emoji (blog post)

    Bitcoin has the right idea, but did not execute it properly, primarily because it was the first and technology has improved and it has not. Monero is actually doing what bitcoin was meant to do and acting as a transactional currency, medium of exchange, and store of value.

    smallpatatas OP ,

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

    True bitcoiners 🤝 no-coiners “Bitcoin should be illegal”

    Mubelotix ,
    @Mubelotix@jlai.lu avatar

    This is 100% wrong

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    Look at my totally stable store of currency bro, trust me bro, this is totally useful as a means of exchange and you can trust in its future value bro, just believe me.

    https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/223ea12f-a80b-4dca-a733-c7acc38c8672.png

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Now, overlay that price chart with a transaction count chart averaged out over say 90 days and what you will notice is that big spike up to 400 and above was at basically no transaction volume which makes it seem more like that was hype. Looking at the price chart over shorter timeframes such as a year will show you that the transaction count is actually increasing now and the price is staying quite stable.

    YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH ,

    I don’t know if this argument is the winner you thought it was. A currency where people aren’t using it as a means of exchange because of price fluctuations is a failure.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    No, no, hear them out. It’s actually super great that when you walk into the grocery store the loaf of bread is $1.50, and by the time you walk to the bread aisle it’s $0.72, and by the time you walk to the cashier it’s $2.10. This is actually super great, because there’s also a medium country’s worth of electricity being consumed to enable that.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    When i pick up a loaf of bread its 0.012, and when i check out its 0.012. Currentsies are going to shift against each other. The exact same thing would occur if you walked into a store in, say, Germany and handed them dollars. Also, do you mind telling me how much energy the banking system uses to run their equipment, build their buildings, have their employees come to their branches, move armored trucks full of cash, etc. Like, I can understand the power use thing being an issue. But if you want to go after something that would make more of a difference, how about figuring out thermal bricks or something for industries making glass? Which produces a hell of a lot more greenhouse gases than crypto mining does. Industrial processes are a huge polluter. Or how about the global transportation system?

    my_hat_stinks ,

    This is the poster child for whataboutisn. You literally just argued that it’s okay for cryptocurrencies to pollute and waste energy because it takes energy to make glass too.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    It fluctuates with an I narrow range, and as it gets more adoption, that range is continuing to narrow. As a matter of fact, I sell items for Monero and I keep my prices completely stable and people do come to buy things. xmrbazaar.com/user/shortwavesurfer2009/. I have my prices set in such a way that they will stay stable until at least December 1st of 2024 at which time I will update them if need be.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    “Ignore the glaring flaws and look only at the parts I tell you to” is great fiscal policy and inspires a lot of trust. You nerds are basically sending PGP emails to each other and pretending it’s money. It isn’t — it’s literally nothing.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Well, we will just have to agree to disagree.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    No, because the rest of us have to deal with the environmental destruction wrought by your virtual paperclip maximizer. it affects everyone.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Fine, go after the industries that are doing more, such as industrial processing for making glass and other things that require high temperatures, the global transportation industry, etc.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    Why would I “go after” an industry producing something useful, rather than grifters powering GPUs to do absolutely nothing of value? We can get to the glass industry once we’ve culled the useless garbage first.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    Monero is CPU based. And actually we are providing something of value in that we are providing a private currency not controlled by any government where no government can tell you you can or cannot use it because they have no power to stop you from doing so. Now, whether you believe that is something we need in this world or not is a different value set.

    alcoholicorn ,

    no government can tell you you can or cannot use it because they have no power to stop you from doing so

    I mean they can kick down your door and seize or hack your PC. That threat is enough to stop most people, making the currency pretty useless in countries that have cracked down on it.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    If the goons are kicking down your door, there’s not a whole lot you’re going to be able to do to stop them from doing so, because they will find something against you. On average, the typical US adult commits three felonies per day. So if they want you, they will get you. Obviously, that’s done by making more and more things illegal to make more and more people criminals.

    explodicle ,

    Why should we care what they go after? If they regulate or tax mining, that’s just a difficulty adjustment that won’t impact our security budget.

    There’s a Pareto improvement to be had here.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Monero is mining-resistant, which means mining farms are going to be unprofitable. The people mining Monero are regular enthusiasts, so that should mean there’s less wasted energy from a ton of people competing over the same number of coins. Oh, and Monero has no maximum block-size, which keeps transaction costs low (which means even less competition over mining).

    I don’t know of a good way to estimate Monero electricity usage, but I’m guessing it’s way less than Bitcoin has per transaction, or at least it would be if they had a similar number of transactions. Monero is a lot more complex currency (so one transaction will actually spawn a bunch of “fake” transactions), but that mining-resistance is doing some work.

    Here’s Monero’s webpage, which has some discussion on energy usage, which I think I’ve summarized well above.

    0x0 ,

    Your comment costs data-center energy, please help save the environment by not commenting.

    parpol ,

    How are those Intel stocks going?

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    Creeping my posts form days ago? That isn’t weird or anything. I’m guessing you’re trying to make a point in there somewhere, but you’ll have to point it out to me.

    parpol ,

    I didn’t check out any of your posts. I was making a point about the “safe and stable” stockmarket vs the “volatile and dangerous” cryptomarket.

    Cryptocurrency is just like the stockmarket, so there are safe, dangerous, and stupid options.

    No one has argued that bitcoin is stable. It maybe will be in 10-20 years, but for stability today, you obviously go with a stablecoin like USDC or whatever stablecoin that is backed by your local currency and assets.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    I didn’t check out any of your posts. I was making a point about the “safe and stable” stockmarket vs the “volatile and dangerous” cryptomarket.

    We’re talking about currencies, not stocks, but I’m not surprised that crypto bros think their imaginary coins an somehow both appreciate in value like an investment while also being stable enough to use as a currency.

    parpol ,

    There are different cryptocurrencies with different purposes. A stablecoin wouldn’t be used as investment vehicle. And at the same time, anything that appreciates in value over time can be used as an investment vehicle. You switch to the coin that fits your purpose. You buy VPNs and privacy services with Monero, you buy stablecoin when you don’t want to invest in anything, you switch to Ethereum or bitcoin to buy groceries. But you don’t put it all in one place unless you think numbers will go up. That’s how you get both stability and investment.

    cacheson ,

    Monero will not scale. All attempts at "improved" altcoins have just sacrificed scalability in exchange for features that look good in the short term to investors that don't know any better.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    There are people dedicated specifically to Monero scaling and they are a hell of a lot smarter than me and do not see any reason why it cannot be scaled properly. Look at some talks by Articmine

    cacheson ,

    I'm not interested in spending a ton of time on this, but I did go and watch this short interview with him about scaling misconceptions.

    Wasn't convincing at all. For one, the guy comes across as kind of dishonest. Not scammer-level dishonest, but more like a politician. The main thing though is that he's just a big-blocker, which is just a total dead end. Having everyone store every single transaction that was ever made until the end of time is just not realistic.

    In order to scale to any globally significant number of users, a cryptocurrency needs a second layer to aggregate transactions, such as Lightning. Monero seems to have nothing in this regard beyond "However, academic and industry research is ongoing and promising in this area."

    they are a hell of a lot smarter than me

    You should not be investing money in something based on this level of understanding, and you definitely should not be advocating it to others. Scaling is an existential problem for cryptocurrencies. Their utility is based on their monetary value, and their monetary value is based on investor assessment of their future utility. Without the ability to scale, there will be no growth in utility, which means no investment other than temporary dumb money, which becomes a vicious cycle.

    shortwavesurfer ,

    While I personally agree that we should not store all transactions for all time, our storage capability is going to get exponentially better. We are able to store data in 3D discs with lasers now and can store petabytes in a single disc the size of your typical old CD-ROM and even store data in DNA if we wish. These obviously aren’t going to be included in your desktop computer anytime in the near future, but they do currently exist and show that storage will not be a problem for a very very long time.

    cacheson ,

    Scalability isn't quite as simple as "how much data can a well-off enthusiast from a developed country store". You need to consider the behavior of your lowest common denominator users.

    You want as many users as possible to run fully-verifying nodes, rather than SPV ("simplified payment verification") nodes that can be tricked by a malicious miner. The more transactions are being done through SPV nodes, the more potential payoff there is for an attacker, and the more resources they can dedicate to an attack.

    Further, if your number of full nodes gets low enough, it becomes feasible for state actors to track down and compromise the remaining node operators. At that point, you may as well just be using a centralized, government approved payment system instead.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    You should not be investing money in something based on this level of understanding

    IMO, you shouldn’t be investing in cryptocurrencies or any currencies for that matter. Currencies should be used, not hoarded with the expectation of gain. If you’re buying cryptocurrencies as an investment, you’ve already lost.

    Where cryptocurrencies have value is as a medium of exchange. In many parts of the world, the central bank isn’t trustworthy and end up causing runaway inflation, such as in Venezuela, Argentina, and Turkey. This is because there is a lot of political gains to be had by manipulating the currency to make things appear better than they are. The US hasn’t had this issue largely because the Federal Reserve is largely immune to politics (they’re appointed by the executive and confirmed by the Senate, but that’s about it). But that’s not guaranteed to always be the case. Board members can be removed, and the President and Senate can theoretically pack the Federal Reserve board in the same way as packing the Supreme Court.

    The great thing about cryptocurrencies is that you don’t need to trust anyone to use it. Here are the parties involved in a transaction:

    • you
    • the other party
    • miners verifying blocks
    • source code maintainers

    Each of those has checks in place. You and the other party don’t need to exchange secrets, only information that is totally acceptable to be shared (pub keys, not private keys). With something like Monero, you can even make a separate key for each transaction if you’d like. Miners compete against each other to validate transactions accurately, and if a miner tries to cheat, their results are excluded. Source code maintainers work in the open, so researchers (or you!) can and do look at the code.

    With fiat, you have to trust the central bank and banking regulators. If you don’t trust your central bank, you’re SOL.

    The cost of using a cryptocurrency vs a central bank is that lack of central oversight, meaning you’ll see more variation in valuations. However, this should smooth out as more people use it as a currency (so more even inflows vs outflows). There isn’t something like the US dollar or Euro’s target 2% inflation rate, so we could see deflation instead of inflation if cryptocurrencies catch on or if people flee to it from investments in a bear market or something.

    The value of a cryptocurrency is the demand for that currency. Just like fiat, it has value if we believe it has value. Fiat currencies aren’t based on anything more than supply and demand for that currency, just like crytocurrencies, with the big distinction that valuations also take into account trust in the backing back (whereas cryptocurrencies include trust in the network and code).

    cacheson ,

    IMO, you shouldn't be investing in cryptocurrencies or any currencies for that matter. Currencies should be
    used, not hoarded with the expectation of gain. If you're buying cryptocurrencies as an investment, you've already lost.

    Cryptocurrencies literally cannot function without speculative investment. Even in the absence of formal investors, someone has to be the first person to accept the tokens in exchange for something of value, in hopes that they will have value of their own in the future. Until then, the tokens are unusable.

    Further, the market cap and liquidity of a cryptocurrency impose practical limits on what it can be used for. You can't very well conduct a billion dollar transaction through a cryptocurrency that has a market cap in the millions. Investment raises the market cap, "unlocking" these higher-value use cases. Conversely, loss of investor confidence will reduce the market cap, and effectively reduce the utility of the coin.

    This is why ability to scale is so important. The current market values of Bitcoin and the various alts are based far more on speculative investment than they are on usage. Those investors believe that the coins will see far more usage (and have far more natural demand) in the future than they do today. If that turns out not to be the case due to an inability to scale, investors will start to flee, and the vicious cycle will start.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I don’t think anyone needs to exchange cryptocurrencies for “something of value” for the investment to work, they just have to believe the currency itself holds value, where value is defined by supply vs demand. If enough people think others will believe it has value, then demand will increase. It’s basically how MLMs work, but it can sustain itself once it reaches a sufficient number of investors.

    Adding transactions for real goods and services in the mix expands the reach of the currency and can stabilize demand a bit once the initial speculators have lost interest. So yeah, there’s absolutely a motivation for speculators to try to get others on-board. But it’s not necessarily a requirement, as we can see with other collector fads like Beanie Babies or Baseball Cards (the only value is in trading with other collectors), but just changed to be digital (NFTs are the strongest analogue).

    However, just because speculators are rewarded if you use a cryptocurrency for transactions doesn’t mean you should avoid it. Use it if it provides value to you. The value proposition is:

    • lower transaction fees, especially for international transactions - Bitcoin fails for small local transactions, but works well for large and international transactions; the lightning network helps for small transactions, and other currencies exist for small transactions as well
    • privacy - banks can and do sell your data, and governments may be interested in your transactions as well; you can’t use cash for online transactions, so there aren’t many good options
    • security - breaches and scams happen, and if you don’t notice the issue soon enough, you could end up paying for fraudulent transactions; with cryptocurrencies, you never share your private key, so you’re as safe as wherever you store that key; you can also move money between keys, so you can keep the bulk of your money safe

    Even without any kind of physical backing, cryptocurrencies offer an attractive value proposition. We could probably solve the above with fiat, but that currently is not a thing. I don’t recommend using cryptocurrencies for everything, nor do I recommend using it as an investment, but I do recommend using it for a few transactions here and there until you feel comfortable with it because of that value proposition.

    cacheson ,

    It seems like you're arguing against a position that I don't hold? I've been invested in Bitcoin for a long time, and I'm quite familiar with its technical and socioeconomic dynamics. I'm skeptical of altcoins specifically, not of cryptocurrency as a concept.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Maybe? It reads like you’re arguing that you shouldn’t buy cryptocurrencies at all if you don’t understand how transactions are handled. I don’t think that’s true, and that will just discourage the normal, everyday person from getting started. You may need that info if you’re interested in investment/trading, but you don’t really need to get into the weeds if you just want to pay for some online services.

    The important thing for lay-people is to recognize the value cryptocurrencies can provide, understand which cryptocurrencies are “stable” (as in, not some altcoin scam), and understand transaction times and costs. That’s honestly it. If we can achieve that, more people will start using cryptocurrencies for transactions where it’s available, more vendors will see it as a viable payment source, liquidity will improve, and developers will address the issues as they come up.

    If you’re buying something other than the top few cryptocurrencies, then yes, I agree with you. But you’re not going to do that if your goal is to use it as a currency, because no real vendors are going to accept whatever that new altcoin is. If you stick with the big coins and your goal is to spend those coins, you’re not likely to get screwed. Bitcoin can work w/ Lightning, and Monero (my preference) is great on its own. Those are also the two that are most commonly accepted by vendors.

    Maybe we agree there, idk. I think your comments read a little gatekeepy and from a “cryptocurrencies are investments” standpoint, and I think the focus should be “cryptocurrencies are currencies.”

    cacheson ,

    Alright, fair enough. Keep in mind though that this comment thread started with an assertion that Bitcoin didn't get it quite right, and Monero did, which is more of a big-picture analysis thing than merely "can I buy something with this". My responses have been in that vein.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    That’s fair. The Lightning network really is an interesting solution to the problem Bitcoin had, and I’m interested to find out if/when Monero will run into a similar problem.

    skizzles , to technology in US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...

    Edit: just realized you said US based. Tuta is not US based so that might not work for you. Sorry about that.

    Tutanota (now just Tuta) allows you to use your domain. I use it, it doesn’t support external clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) but they do have Android, Linux, Windows (maybe Mac too) clients.

    It’s also cheap.

    I’ve been using it for a few years now, it works for me.

    You can get a free account to check it out first and if you like it just upgrade to get the personal domain usage and increased storage limit.

    glowie , to technology in Bitcoin is Stupid and Does Not Deserve an Emoji (blog post)
    @glowie@h4x0r.host avatar

    Can’t believe I wasted brainspace reading that garbage

    threelonmusketeers , (edited ) to newcommunities in Weekly active communities promotion thread

    A few miscellaneous communities I’ve tried to breathe some life into this past week:

    • !uselessredcircle
    • !keming (poorly spaced letters)
    • !prequelmemes (surprisingly, had been dormant for 10 months)
    • !ihadastroke (words that like look sense they make but don’t should)
    • !bertstrips (previously on feddit.de, the lemm.ee version was the next largest)
    • !leaky_cauldron (the admin of that instance has recently returned, which is very encouraging)
    • !cubers (Rubik’s cubes and related twisty puzzles)
    Blaze OP ,

    the admin of that instance has recently returned, which is very encouraging)

    Good news!

    pewgar_seemsimandroid , to science_memes in Gecko

    pebble

    4vr , to linux in IDE/Text Editor Recommendations for Go Development on Linux

    Zed now has Linux support.

    And then helix editor works with Go LSP, this is my current daily driver. Even without plugins, helix works better and manageable than vim/emacs. Only thing that doesn’t work is debugger.

    greywolf0x1 ,

    If you don’t mind, can you share your helix config?

    4vr ,

    Sure. gist.github.com/…/18cd6f8b0b059073460f0f3c322b893…

    Includes both config & languages config.

    greywolf0x1 ,

    much appreciated, I just can’t seem to get mine setup right

    Elevator7009 , to newcommunities in Weekly active communities promotion thread

    Video game genres

    murtaza64 , to linux in IDE/Text Editor Recommendations for Go Development on Linux

    I think neovim with kickstart has out-of-the-box support for go, or if not, should be configurable with two added lines (add the treesitter parser and LSP). Unlike nvchad and lunarvim and stuff, this is not a “distribution” of neovim but a good starting point for a config that makes it easy to slowly learn how to add stuff and change stuff as you see fit.

    At the beginning, you can add languages that you need support for pretty easily by adding to a list of LSPs and Treesitter parsers that should be installed; later on you can start adding and configuring plugins as you wish.

    I’d say it sets you up about the same level as Helix or a little less than VSCode.

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