mudrockbestgirl (u/mudrockbestgirl)

mudrockbestgirl commented on Japanese 'My Number Card' Digital IDs Coming to Apple's Wallet App macrumors.com/2024/05/29/... · Posted by u/tosh

Cookingboy · 2 years ago

People don't realize how technologically incompetent Japan is. Fax machines are still the norm for day to day business in most places, and online banking is seen as a cutting edge feature.

Hell, until very recently most non-combini ATM machines in Japan have limited business hours (like WTF do ATMs stop working on the weekends???), and buying online concert tickets means you buy it online, then go to the local 7/11 and print it out in paper form. The rest of the world has long since moved to E-sign and the average Japanese person is still expected to use a personal seal for business dealing.

It's like Japan took a very weird turn on their tech-tree in the late 80s and went off a deep end and invested all the points in toilets.

My toilet was smarter than Siri and could sing to me but god forbid if I wanted to pay my rent online lol.

mudrockbestgirl · 2 years ago

Not my experience. I think you are either just parroting what you read online, live in the countryside, or have not been to Japan for 10+ years. I live in Tokyo and none of what you say is true here. I pay all my rent online, and have for 5 years in all places I've ever lived. I never printed out concert tickets. Seals have become less and less common and are almost never necessary anymore except in very traditional B2B settings. I have one and I have never used it despite have various Japanese bank accounts. They are officially being phased out. I don't know about the ATMs because I never have to use those since 99% of restaurants accept digital payments. Yes, there are still a few that need cash, but it's really just 1%.

Japan is definitely technologically behind. I am not arguing against that. But let's not exaggerate here.

mudrockbestgirl commented on What it’s like to have a social media detox theguardian.com/media/202... · Posted by u/bishopsmother

dijit · 3 years ago

Honestly, it's very difficult to cut social media.

We like to tell ourselves that those who managed to quit (and are informing us of how bad it is) are being snobs or acting superior: but the truth is unfortunately that we are just feeling defensive of our inability cut the habit.

I managed to get off of facebook and my mental health improved greatly, enough that I actually notice it. However, that was insanely hard and I did it years ago... and to this day I get tempted to go back.

I'm still on Instagram, I'm on tiktok, I'm on Twitter.

Twitter in particular always leaves me angry when I close it: people keep telling me that it's my fault, that I'm using the tool wrong, that I don't curate my feed enough.

I don't care, the truth is I can't quit because I feel like I'll be out of the loop, that people will not be able to reach me and I'll lose out on being a member of society.

For example: I lost connection with half of my family when I deleted whatsapp.

At some point we have to recognise that we've transitioned the majority of communication to these platforms: and telling people to quit is unreasonable.

I say this as a person who has tried, I recognise it is hard, I even believe it to be _necessary_ and even I can't do it.

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

I successfully quit Twitter. I used to be on it ~2 hours a day, now I haven't opened in for almost a year. Unfortunately that habit has been replaced by others and I still have FOMO from not being on Twitter when I see colleagues sharing Twitter links.

It's incredibly hard. The only thing that seems to work for me is to create a system to convince myself that I'm not missing out. For example, set aside a fixed 30 minutes a day, or 2 hours on a weekend, to go through the top links of your favorite social media state to satisfy the craving (I use RSS for that). That way at you can at least stop wasting time becoming distracted at random times during the day. Treat it like a cheat meal.

Another thing that has helped me cut some habits are reviews. After you spend a fixed hour on Twitter, ask yourself: What did I get out of this? Was it worth it? How did I feel before and after? Write it down in your journal. If you read your old entries week after week and they're all saying "I spent an hour on Twitter but I didn't feel like I got anything out of it" it makes it easier to quit.

Still, I can't help but feel that optimized social media feeds are the worst thing that has happened to our society in the last 10 years. Our brains haven't evolved to deal with this. And I don't think people have realized just how bad it is. Sure, we see news that social media is bad every day, but I don't think we as a society have truly understood the full implications. I think it's much worse than most think it is.

mudrockbestgirl commented on Coins Stolen from Wallet github.com/Chia-Network/c... · Posted by u/bsdz

janalsncm · 3 years ago

Imagine if forgetting your bank account password meant your account was unrecoverable.

Or if a bug in the bank’s software meant you could lose your life savings.

Or if no transaction could be reversed, even in the case of obvious offline fraud?

All these things and more can be found in the incredible world of crypto.

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

I don't understand where the bank analogies always come from. Crypto is not a bank. Holding crypto is like holding cash. If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction?

If you want a third-party (bank) to secure your cash so you can do that with crypto, but then you're also exposed to the counterparty risk that comes with it. But that has nothing to do with crypto or fiat or whatever. If you don't trust yourself with managing the keys, put it on Coinbase or Kranken, centralized banks. If you want full control, put in your safe, i.e. manage your own key.

There are also decentralized alternatives that offer something in the middle, e.g. smart contract or social recovery wallets.

mudrockbestgirl commented on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf] irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040... · Posted by u/r3trohack3r

jakelazaroff · 3 years ago

That’s not how bank account balances work. My balance is an entry in a database, sure, but it’s not “just” an entry.

If a video game company decides my points are now worth half as much, or that they’ve expired, that’s their prerogative — and if I don’t like it that’s too bad. If a bank tried to do that, they’d get hit with a ton of lawsuits that they’d definitely lose.

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

That's only true in good economic times and non-war periods and places. What you're saying is true in America right now, but not in many other countries [0], and it's also not true across time. Even in America, eventually a time will come where you can't get your money out of a bank account exactly because it's just an entry in a centralized database and because it will be in the best interest of people in power to prevent you from doing so. This, and similar restrictions, have happened several times throughout history.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's not fundamentally as different from an in-game currency as you think it is. The cycles just happen much less frequently over longer periods of time (companies go bankrupt and change faster than wars happens) so you may never see it in your lifetime if you're lucky.

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/lebanese-cafe-owner-hailed-for...

mudrockbestgirl commented on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf] irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040... · Posted by u/r3trohack3r

kiawe_fire · 3 years ago

Sure… I read that. The instructions do a great job of explaining a few cases of what is definitely a digital asset, and they explain what you and I both know are obviously included.

The instructions “include” a few obvious things. They don’t “exclude” anything like V-bucks.

So what constitutes a “representation of value”?

I can buy and sell V-Bucks cards, can I not?

It may sound like I’m being a bit obtuse, but there is nothing here that tells me whether my ultra rare skin that I received that I could sell my account for $100 on eBay applies or not.

Many things are obviously a digital asset, but determining what isn’t is far trickier, especially once you move away from perhaps the easiest example of digital currency in Fortnite.

Saying “obviously they’re targeting Bitcoin and the Charlie Bit My Finger NFT” tells me what I already know I should declare. Nothing tells me what I shouldn’t… almost like they can decide that whenever they want during an audit.

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

I guess most reasonable answer is that you should include anything that would transfer a significant amount of money to the IRS. Starbucks points and FFXIV gold may be theoretically included, but the liquidity for those is so small that the IRS just doesn't care and would never enforce it. They don't want that $100. What they're trying to do here is get a cut of the billions of dollars that come from crypto.

I know that's probably obvious to you, but I don't think there's much more to it. It's just another way to make money.

mudrockbestgirl commented on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf] irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040... · Posted by u/r3trohack3r

cmeacham98 · 3 years ago

You see how it says "See instructions"? So let's go see what the instructions say: https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2022_publink1...

> Digital assets are any digital representations of value that are recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology. For example, digital assets include non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and virtual currencies, such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins.

Obviously, V-Bucks are not a "representation of value" and are not "recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology".

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

I think the op may be asking the more general question of why it is defined like this. What makes a "digital representations of value that are recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger" so fundamentally different from an MMO currency that it becomes taxable? The fact that it's distributed? Why should that matter? What even is the definition of distributed? And isn't an encrypted database cryptographically secured?

mudrockbestgirl commented on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf] irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040... · Posted by u/r3trohack3r

ocdtrekkie · 3 years ago

They appear to specifically have guidance indicating that this refers to cryptocurrency and NFTs. However, I would also point out, stuff you buy in a video game is never actually an asset: It's just an entry in that company's database that your account has an item. You never really control it in the way you theoretically control a crypto asset.

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

That argument doesn't make much sense. You don't control your bank balance, which are just IOUs, either. It's just an entry in some centralized company's database.

mudrockbestgirl commented on Ask HN: Preferred Platform to Blog · Posted by u/andsoitis

mudrockbestgirl · 3 years ago

I use Hugo [0] and host on Netlify, but anywhere works. Couldn't be happier. I used Wordpress and Jekyll previously, but Hugo has been a good upgrade.

The problem with Wordpress is that it's difficult to export content if you ever decide to move, unless you love dealing with SQL and format conversion. It's also annoying to host since it requires a database. Static site generators like Hugo/Jekyll can be deployed anywhere for cheap without dependencies and since it's just plan text / Markdown it's easy to move between frameworks.

[0] https://gohugo.io/