anon9001 (u/anon9001)

anon9001 commented on Defending Privacy in Crypto blog.coinbase.com/defendi... · Posted by u/barmstrong

jim_kreggis · 3 years ago

The only way for crypto to win is to implement privacy and anonymity in a way regulators cannot prevent, such as privacy coins. Btc and Eth relying on mixers is a flaw which regulators will exploit to their advantage.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

Crypto can technically implement privacy and anonymity in a way that regulators cannot prevent. Now what do we do about it?

Also, Ethereum could adopt privacy by default some day, via their proposal process.

It's fascinating to watch regulators talk about "bitcoin" and "ethereum" as if they're "gold" and "oil", unchanging commodities that just need to be categorized and dealt with appropriately.

Ethereum is totally publicly visible today, but it does not need to be that way tomorrow. These are living projects.

anon9001 commented on Defending Privacy in Crypto blog.coinbase.com/defendi... · Posted by u/barmstrong

nl · 3 years ago

> Crypto and digital assets should be free from regulation, even if it brings side effects (e.g. laundering).

It's far from clear to me why on earth crypto should be free from regulation at all.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

I think this case is a pretty clear example of why.

The regulators are supposed to be protecting who from what exactly? And at whose expense?

So far I've seen two lines of reasoning:

1) Regulators are needed to protect me from myself. I can't assess if these dog-coins have long-term investment potential or not, so I want the government in the loop somehow. If I can purchase something on the internet, I assume it's safe, or the government wouldn't let it be sold.

2) Regulators need to protect the government from the effects of money laundering. I must give up privacy for the greater good, as the money laundered by North Korean hackers will be used against my country. Giving up all privacy in exchange for a small reduction in the funding of our enemies is always a good trade.

Even if I buy one of these arguments wholeheartedly, the practical matter is that we're trying to prevent math from being done here, and it's just not going to work. It's sort of like preventing piracy.

But public sentiment has become very anti-crypto, so I suspect we'll land in a war-on-drugs type situation where the crypto never really goes away and you can still transact it anonymously, but we mostly just don't talk about it except for the occasional bust to ensure more enforcement budget next year.

anon9001 commented on Defending Privacy in Crypto blog.coinbase.com/defendi... · Posted by u/barmstrong

mouzogu · 3 years ago

I don't think you can defend this kind of privacy in a court. They are not impartial.

This is not really about crypto, or tornado cash. I think it's more about ownership and surveillance. The only solution is to innovate in the area of evasion. Since there is no middle ground amenable to the ones who make the laws in their own interests.

We can just look at wikileaks, panama papers and so on. Money laundering and embezzlement is much more pervasive and rapaciously damaging in the highest levels of "power". Wealth "inequality" is an oligopoly of concentrated power and wealth.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

I think this is exactly the kind of privacy you can defend in court.

The reason we don't have privacy is because technology has been centralized and it's easy to pressure providers to give up user's privacy.

The idea that parties have financial privacy between each other is actually the default. I can hand you physical cash. This is normal.

That's not because of some special provision that "allows" for cash to be private. That's just how it's always been done.

If you do work for me, and I hand you a gold coin, you don't have to do something special to make sure the government can track the item of value. You just mark it down on your taxes as income.

This is how things had been done until maybe the last 20 years or so, when 9/11 greatly expanded the government surveillance requirements on financial businesses.

There's a mountain of law to support private property transfer.

anon9001 commented on WeWork's former CEO has a new startup, reportedly valued at more than $1B cnn.com/2022/08/15/tech/a... · Posted by u/cpeterso

ok_dad · 3 years ago

Sounds like it might be like a time share at scale for permanent housing. Whatever the case, a few connected people will make money on it and it’ll likely make housing worse somehow.

I can’t believe this degenerate can start billion dollar companies left and right and honest people are constantly getting told we’re asking for too much to have things like work life balance or decent pay.

I’ll giggle like a school girl someday when the other shoe drops and the rich are being eaten.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

If you're concerned about "work life balance", you're probably the rich that would be eaten.

anon9001 commented on At what age do people first experience depression? ourworldindata.org/depres... · Posted by u/downboots

anon9001 · 3 years ago

Does anyone know what depression is?

You don't take a blood test or get a brain scan or anything like that.

Instead, you do this: https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/educat...

> These patient assessment measures were developed to be administered at the initial patient interview and to monitor treatment progress, thus serving to advance the use of initial symptomatic status and patient reported outcome (PRO) information, as well as the use of “anchored” severity assessment instruments. Instructions, scoring information, and interpretation guidelines are included.

From that page, here's how you measure how severe your depression is: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Prac...

These are the "guidelines" in the article.

> Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much

Am I having trouble staying asleep because my alarm is going off? How much sleep is "too much"?

> Feeling bad about yourself—or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down

What about people that have let themselves and family down? Is that not valid?

> Poor appetite or overeating

Relative to what? I'm not being fed per gram with a feed chart. I have no idea how I'd answer this.

> Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way

This one's a trick question, because I think it's "nearly every day" for most people for at least a brief second per day? But say that and you might get shipped off to in-patient, so I know the answer is "never".

According to this thing, I probably have severe depression. I don't think I'm depressed though? There's no way to tell.

A better way to look at it might be that anyone who talks to a mental health professional has a good likelihood of leaving with a depression diagnosis, an SSRI prescription, and a follow up appointment.

anon9001 commented on Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting banner? ux.stackexchange.com/ques... · Posted by u/mmillin

corrral · 3 years ago

> I think there's still a problem in our society or species in general that people simply do not read things thoroughly.

We're overwhelmed with shit to read. Most of it poorly written. Almost none of it important. Combine with the tendency (in some societies—notably, the US is possibly the most like this) to post rules and notices and disclaimers on everything, and we become blind even to things that look like they might be important—because they almost never are.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

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anon9001 commented on A Response caspercloudwalker.bearblo... · Posted by u/memorable

Zababa · 3 years ago

Sorry to single you out specifically, but you look like you've thought a lot about that kind of thing, so I'll ask. When you say:

> But it's a window into just how isolated people are and what it feels like to not have community.

What do you mean by community? I see this word everywhere online, and never really understood it. I think it's mostly an American thing, but I'm not sure. I can see how someone has family, friends, acquaintances from work or hobbies, but I don't get what's meant by "community".

anon9001 · 3 years ago

I think the original article painted it pretty well. If you could disappear and nobody would notice, you probably aren't part of a community. Shared interests and activities definitely count if there's meaningful interaction happening. Work can be a type of community too.

The hallmarks of community IMO are some shared values, some shared purpose, recurring interactions, united under some named banner. A well functioning workplace can feel a lot like a thriving community.

I don't really have much in the way of community myself at the moment, but I have experienced it before. I think it's one of those things like sex where everyone who's never participated thinks it's a huge deal, but once you've been at it a little while, it's still important, but the framing shifts a lot.

It's one thing to be a stable loner that's not invested in any group, but it's another to desperately be seeking a community without the experience to know what's "normal". That's where the parasocial stuff starts happening.

anon9001 commented on A Response caspercloudwalker.bearblo... · Posted by u/memorable

anon9001 · 3 years ago

Non-incel here (I swear, ignore the username) who read your post and some of the accompanying thread. Valid feelings, a little cringey, I hope you figure yourself out, but that's not what I want to comment about.

I spend more time than I should reading extremist content (ok, go ahead, look at the username) because I think the behavior of that crowd is fascinating and disturbingly influential. And sometimes it's funny. Also, they now set US policy, so maybe we should be paying attention.

> I will clear it up now: I am not any kind of incel, conspiracy theory believer, advocate of violence or racism, or follower of any dogma, philosophy, or charismatic person of any kind.

When people talk about "alt right pipeline", this is it, but casper isn't the perpetrator. He's the target.

Ok, not casper specifically. In those circles, they'd make fun of him blogging about his feelings for obvious reasons. Then they'd make fun of his artsy picture, then that he took down his picture, and once more if he puts it back up. The cycle of abuse would continue until he stops reacting to the crowd.

But it's a window into just how isolated people are and what it feels like to not have community. And we know there's millions or maybe tens of millions of people that feel this way and are nowhere near capable of articulating it.

It's so easy to imagine someone in his position be enticed a movement that has a consistent-ish ideology and purpose greater than yourself. And as a bonus, it comes with a group of regular guys that also hang out on discord or telegram all day and share memes. They might even meet up in the woods sometimes, just to drink some beers and bbq and shoot some guns once a month. Or "protect" an election or school board by providing "security". You know, community stuff.

> No, I am only interested in something real, whatever that may be.

So few can cope with this emotion by blogging about their feelings. For a lot of people "blame the others" seems to be the easiest way to cope with this feeling.

(Also, archive.org still has your picture up, either fix your link or remove the broken img tag. You just look like another @jack clone anyway and nobody cares.)

anon9001 commented on How Bungie identified a mass sender of fake DMCA notices torrentfreak.com/digital-... · Posted by u/perihelions

teddyh · 3 years ago

> we should just hand all governance over to a consortium of industry leaders that are accountable to shareholders. If we're going to do an oligarchy, let's at least be efficient about it.

They might at least make the trains run on time.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

We might have trains!

All the fascist stuff is pretty bad -- nationalism, strongman leaders, isolating an "other" with violence, grifters selling out the people's interests to corporations -- I'm not down with any of that.

But maybe we could have some kind of system where corporations are forced to vote on governance that applies to all other corporations for the collective good of capitalist progress?

There needs to be some kind of unified governing principle to make everyone's lives better.

We can't go on with BIG_CO hiring lobbying firms to most efficiently snake their legislation through the system unchecked.

In my thought experiment here, most corporations would want to enact policy responsibly for the public good. Cooperation between corporations would happen, but the default position would be for more happy consumers.

So far we've tried letting representative democracy work out hard issues and that hasn't gone well. We've also tried deferring governance entirely to the courts with poor results.

I'm open to suggestions.

anon9001 commented on Google says US employees can relocate to states with abortion rights theverge.com/2022/6/24/23... · Posted by u/acalmon

silisili · 3 years ago

In the US, typically employers pay for most or all of your family's health insurance. Yes, it's absurd. Losing your job means losing your insurance.

US also has laws requiring up to 3 months of leave for having children.

So, if you have a child, the company must accept or pay for your leave, depending on policy, and their health insurance costs for you go up.

anon9001 · 3 years ago

I don't think non-Americans appreciate the complexity here.

To anyone unfamiliar with our health care system for typical employees:

Once a year, most companies have a "benefits training" session that explains this year's crazy health care situation. They're boring and I only go to the first one when I join a company.

But it's 2022 and we have youtube, so I found Ohio State's training in public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjAWj0f6DAc

Anyone employed with benefits needs to have at least a vague understanding of everything in there or they're at financial risk.

So when you hear about contractors fighting to become employees so they have access to benefits, they're fighting for the opportunity to make these benefits elections.

I know plenty of people who design systems for a living that find getting their elections right to be confusing.

You'll notice that a big part of our health care cost mitigation is projecting expenses. It's like a prediction market where you can only lose less, but if you get it wrong you can lose a lot.

Fun!