Interesting, I didn’t realize still gif was lossless, I was thinking in comparison to lossy formats like jpg.

it explains it using other formulas. It’s like if the teacher taught you trigonometry using algebra. They expect you to either already know algebra, or to learn it from somewhere else. You could say that the teacher is just restating trigonometric questions in algebraic format, and that might be a fair way to interpret it, but that also might be enough for people who already know algebra

I initially viewed this as xenophobic, and was like “the comic author can’t be this stupid right?”

But actually maybe the message isn’t the typical “perceived good thing with hidden negative downside” that their comics typically have. Maybe this comic is just saying not to judge a restaurant’s staff by whatever ethnic food they make.

happens all the time in Asia lol

It depends on how much they care. If the chinese people running the restaurant are just half-assing japanese food and using japanese culture for the name and clout, its disrespectful. Effectively just trying to profit off the culture. Whereas if those chinese people are trying their best to understand and replicate the culture, it’s fine.

Hot take: a japanese person can “appropriate” their own culture. If they just take advantage of their name and ethnicity, without actually learning about the culture. This is just really rare in practice because people of any ethnicity are usually forced to learn about their own culture when growing up

Even if you have a password for your ssh key, malware on your system can just wait until you enter the password.

My point is that SSH access is very powerful, and effectively means that the security of the SSH server is reduced to the security of the SSH client. If your SSH client is pwned, so is your server. If you have 10 devices each with ssh access to each other, then if any one device is pwned, all devices are pwned as well.

This is not the case for systems designed for file sharing only. For example with syncthing, if one device gets pwned, all it can do is send files to the other devices.

I don’t think in this case the logic is circular, it just explains how the light cone shows that FTL breaks causality, and assumes that you’ll learn the math behind the light cone somewhere else. Maybe the author assumes the light cone can be better learned from other sources

still gifs have good compression? I recall that motion gifs are notorious for large file sizes, but are still gifs the opposite?

Most people probably don’t care but it can be a security risk, allowing malware to move “laterally” between all your devices. For my main devices I don’t give them SSH access to each other, but I do give them SSH access to my secondary devices (like a Pi-Hole)

I would argue that your examples are about manipulation of people, not of the currency. Similar to the craziness of the GME (Gamestop) era, where it felt like everybody and their dog started buying GME stock. Or, say, a news outlet causing panic and a bank run. Though you’re right that since crypto still doesn’t have broad adoption, it’s easier to manipulate the smaller userbase.

Manipulation of the currency would be more like the government printing more money. This is not possible in crypto, where power is decentralized.

The instability is definitely unfortunate though. It’s a chicken and egg problem. If crypto had wider adoption, and was accepted in many stores, then it would become more stable. Just look at how much more stable the big crypto coins (bitcoin, eth) are compared to smaller altcoins. However, due to low adoption it’s still quite unstable, and that instability hurts adoption 🙃

Well crypto is fully decentralized, with every node acting independently, so it really is the most competitive environment you can imagine, if that’s what you’re looking for

it really sucks how unpredictable the crypto landscape is, I agree. But until a better alternative comes along (in terms of privacy and decentralization), I’ll continue being optimistic about it

I think you may have also been thinking about labyrinths, which only have a single path

Nope, I considered this as well.

GNU Taler is built on top of existing payment systems. It’s just a token you exchange money for, like those arcades you go to where you exchange money for arcade tokens. So it’s only as decentralized as the system it’s built on top of.

It does provide some privacy, but only for buyers, so this doesn’t prevent censorship. If the banks want to ban porn sites from accepting money, or block Steam from accepting transactions for porn games, they can. Censoring sales is the same as censoring purchases.

On top of that, if GNU Taler is built on top of centralized banking like it’s currently pushing for, then it inherits the same problems. The government can say “Poor people can’t be trusted, so we won’t let poor people get tokens, they’ll just have to use trackable methods like Paypal.” Or they can have a social credit system and say “Only people with 5000 credit or above can use Taler.”

And the government and banks still control the value and supply of the currency. They can print money however they want.

GNU Taler also doesn’t try to solve the distributed consensus problem. Afaik, it offloads the problem to the implementation. I have no idea how current implementations deal with multiple servers disagreeing on the ledger of transactions (say, due to network issues or server crashes), but it sounds like it trusts that servers will cooperate, and uses government audits to verify compliance. Again, centralized, and vulnerable to corruption, coercion, and collusion. GNU Taler could technically be built on top of bitcoin and blockchain, it even says so in the official FAQ, but that’s not their current vision

Imagine walking clockwise around an city block. You keep turning right, but just circle the block, never leaving it. Same concept.

“and other crypto” is there because the technology is still developing. I love Monero because it’s private, and it’s effectively the only way we have right now to make payments anonymously. But it also uses proof-of-work, aka bad for the environment. A choose-between-two-evils situation. But I’m confident a proof-of-stake coin can have the same privacy properties of Monero without the environmental concerns. That’s why I talk about crypto the technology as a whole, and not specifically Monero.

What problems? And crypto gets associated with crime because the currency is harder to control, which is precisely the point. Governments love being able to control their payments systems, just like they love to define what a “crime” is.

I’m not convinced that a triopoly (not sure what it’s called) is significantly different from a duopoly.

My own views are that we need a balance of control and chaos. Both extremes have substantual downsides.

My main view is that a centralized system can be built on top of a decentralized one, but not the other way around. And by the way, if crypto and traditional banking co-existed, with broad support for both, that would be a decentralized system, and I’m fine with that. As long as people can easily convert their fiat to crypto and interact with the same sellers in order to bypass censorship.

manipulated by whales? are you talking about 51% attacks? censorship? Can you link some concrete examples of major crypto coins getting manipulated? I think there was a potential 51% attack on Monero but IIRC nothing actually happened.

I don’t think my proposition was a big ask. Free computing and legal encryption are already the norm, I’m simply saying we should not let them be taken away.

But I imagine that you’re not talking about that. I imagine you’re talking about the adoption of crypto. You are right, that it’s a greater leap than Wero. But I would also hesitate to call Wero an improvement over the existing system. Visa and Mastercard are problematic due to their scale. That is why their actions become oppressive. If Wero reaches the same scale, then what prevents Wero from censoring the same content? Visa and Mastercard already compete with each other, why did they cooperate to censor porn previously, and why wouldn’t Wero do the same?

The problem is centralization. Small central authorities having control over the world’s payment systems. Wero doesn’t solve that. Now I don’t mind incremental improvements, but as long as we recognize that the problem is centralization, then we should also be pushing for decentralization, and the only system we have that supports it (crypto).