Recent comments in /f/technology

VelveteenAmbush t1_jefpifg wrote

Reply to comment by atwegotsidetrekked in Senator Warner’s RESTRICT Act Is Designed To Create The Great Firewall Of America by vriska1

The biggest issue is programming, not privacy.

Should we have allowed the USSR to operate a major television broadcasting network in the US at the height of the Cold War?

The GDPR has nothing to do with that concern.

Anyway, "citizens can decide for themselves" is not how we usually handle trade disputes. If Country X tariffs or bans our widgets, we usually respond by tariffing or banning their doohickeys. It isn't up to our citizens to decide for themselves whether to use Country X's doohickeys.

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danielravennest t1_jefp5ey wrote

Reply to comment by TrexPushupBra in It's becoming increasingly clear that fintech has a fraud problem by marketrent

The original bitcoin was intended to be a proof-of-concept experiment. It deliberately had a finite circulation to prevent inflation, and a declining block reward (which is where new bitcoins come from) to encourage early miners to participate and secure the blockchain.

New and improved versions were supposed to remedy whatever problems were exposed by the original. For example, a 1 MB block size turned out to be too restrictive once many people started using it.

New cryptocoins do exist, but way too many of them. 80% of the crypto market is represented by 6 coins, and the other 23,000 account for 20%. Most of them don't do anything new and improved, so we called them "shitcoins" because they "don't do shit" for users.

The so-called "stablecoins", whose value is closely tied to the US dollar, now account for 84% of total crypto trading volume. They are now the currency that people are using day-to-day. The original bitcoin and a few of the others are the "store of value" coins, like gold or real estate for everyone else. Not something you spend now, but hold for later. In fact, I never spent any of the bitcoins I mined. I held them for about 7 years and then sold them at a profit, not unlike I did with various homes and other property during my life.

NOTE: Despite my good experiences with Bitcoin, I now warn people away from crypto as a whole because it has too many scams and losses from hacks.

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SVZ0zAflBhUXXyKrF5AV t1_jefnq5k wrote

Reply to comment by zonzo2E in Meta wants EU users to apply for permission to opt out of data collection - Instead of a yes/no consent, Meta users will fill out a form and include justification. by speckz

I cannot find the report now, years ago an ISP here in the UK did a trial of data mining (I think they used deep packet inspection) and injecting averts on their unsuspecting customers.

When they were caught out they said they decided not to tell their customers as they claimed their customers wouldn't understand. The government and related watchdog did nothing about it. I recall reading that the relevant branch of the EU threatened to sue the UK government if they didn't act. I don't recall what the outcome was.

I believe the trial was conducted by BT Internet and a third party company whose advert related tech they used.

At the time I recall the IT/tech news sources were reporting it as that's where I read about it. I don't know what the general news media reported on the subject.

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Jorycle t1_jefnm7q wrote

Reply to comment by WaitingForNormal in Senator Warner’s RESTRICT Act Is Designed To Create The Great Firewall Of America by vriska1

This is unironically what many people seem to have argued when defending TikTok bans and this bill.

Protip guys, "So? China bans our apps" is not the winning argument you seem to think it is.

I didn't even see there are already at least 3 guys in here saying almost exactly that before I hit post.

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cyphersaint t1_jefmrbk wrote

Reply to comment by NoPoliticsAllisGood in GM plans to phase out Apple CarPlay in EVs, with Google's help by ouatedephoque

Android Automotive is different from Android Auto. Android Auto allows you to connect your smart phone to your car. Android Automotive is the car's OS, essentially. They want all of the I/O to go through that, and not your phone. That way they can charge you a subscription fee for anything you use connected to it.

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danielravennest t1_jefl59e wrote

Reply to comment by 400921FB54442D18 in It's becoming increasingly clear that fintech has a fraud problem by marketrent

> "what are the use cases for this that don't include serious money getting involved?"

What people were trying to do back then was get it accepted as an alternate currency. It would be used for things like international money transfer, where the fees are very high, or online purchases, which wasn't near as developed as it is today. I used it as fundraising for my project, like GoFundMe but without fees.

Another proposed use was microtransactions, since bitcoins are divisible to 8 decimal places (0.01 microbitcoins). That would be for things like reading one article, without subscribing to an entire newspaper or magazine.

It was also assumed back then that the original Bitcoin was in no way "production software". It was supposed to be a rough proof-of-concept of a distributed time-stamp and record-keeping ledger (the blockchain). As it turned out, it became the dominant cryptocoin and the code never evolved much. All the evolution since then came from " altcoins" (other cryptocoins).

> "uh, I dunno, something something revolution?"

You either have never seen or are making fun of the forums where all of this was discussed, including several subreddits on this site.

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