Numberone

I mean when we watch decades of wars that kill thousands of American's and MILLIONS of people in their own countries for no reason, maybe we need a little additional justification rather than "fight for your country". Nah! Probably just the fault of the "instant gratification" generations being selfish again.

We see more, and trust less now. Seems like a good first order explanation to me anyway.

Whoopie doing this shit makes me more sad than other dipshit boomers. Growing up she was Guinan, a character on Star Trek TNG. She was unbelievably old and wise and gentle and kind and, honestly, had the best fucking hats. Every time she says something like this, or shat on Bernie, or whatever it is today, it drives home that it's all story telling, and makes it harder to believe in something better.

They're both genocide supporters, don't worry

I genuinely don't understand why so many people go with the network brand. AFAIK all of the US networks have MVNO's that operate on their networks at much lower cost. Some of those virtual operators are even owned by the big guys, e.g. Cricket on ATT. My coworkers pay literally hundreds of dollars more per month than is necessary, and what, they get a few Mbps faster data rates? Is that really worth it?

Edit: TIL a lot of people have had a hard time with MVNO's. My experience has been excellent and consistent, but that apparently doesn't generalize.

Ouch

Oh I see. Yeah that's cool. I've seen several posts around the fediverse that take a real tsk tsk signal user kind of tone, So I responded to yours kind of defensively. As a person with middle of the road tech knowledge I also curious if how I think about it stands up to scrutiny (because people will tell me!). Didn't mean to distract from the intent. Thanks for posting this in any case.

For me using signal wasn't about becoming Jason Bourne, it was about changing the threat model. I don't have any dilusions of grandeur that I can't be owned if I'm targeted, but you know what? My calls and texts aren't stored with my phone company with a direct link to the Government and advertisers. That may be low hanging fruit, but that's dealing with most of the issues the average user is going to run into. I'd suggust that the step from SMS to Signal is of greater benifit to a normal user than from signal to something more advanced. And, fwiw it's open sourced and audited, which gives me more confidence than something like imessage or WhatsApp, despite similarities im encryption schemes.

Guess you won. I'll just pack up and head out with all my wrongness. 🖖

Yeah that's true about losing access to your shit for sure. There are options like multisignature accounts that could reduce the possibility of theft, but really the danger in crypto is shooting yourself in the face and losing your keys. Theft comes from bad software around the crypto like browser extensions and shit like that, the blockchain itself though makes theft numerically impossible on timescales like the existance of the universe. But your point stands that it isn't user friendly, which isn't new to emerging technology.

On a personal note, I very much like the model of self custody of assets, and this is coming from someone who almost fucked up and lost their keys. Loss of assets is a possibility and should be in the mind of users, but the tradeoff here is that you always have access to your funds and control over them.

Another commenter stated that crypto is solution in search of a problem, and I don't think that's not necessarily wrong. I see that as optimistic because it's still a solution. It potentially broadens the space of possibilities from our sole option of centralized control by existing wealth/power structures.

Your second paragraph is where I think the win is. When you have self custody of things, you have more ineroperability and stuff like that. Largely I buy the statement that all this is a solution in search of a problem. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. It broadens the possible space of options in the future, which I find to be exciting.

Edit..added the following.shit

There is at least one airline using this NFT model currently, in Argentina I think. It could be that the CEO is using the service because he's just a crypto maximalist but I believe the win from their point of view is that they get a cut of subsequent secondary sales. They've sold the ticket once, maybe you can get a bit more for it.

As far as the card game goes, what your saying, that the game could be shuttered is not different than what we currently have. It's only different in that you're able to own the cards while it's running. Maybe you want to gift your child a good card that you have, you can just send it to them. Impossible currently because you don't control anything in hearthstone except how much money to spend on packs.

I don't think that I'll be able to change your mind. I get the bad blood with crypto, really, but I guess I just don't share the absolute conviction that the whole thing is a scam.

The way you're breaking down ownership is true, but it's true about every form or ownership. The deed to your house? You don't own anything, that's just a piece of paper that someone says prooves that you have a right to live there. Whether that's saved in a county records department or a blockchain that doesn't really change. Point taken, but I think it's a broader point than how you were using it.

I'm not really sure what makes saving your deed information on a blockchain less valid than in a county records department though. I mean breaking it down, a blockchain is really just a ledger that keeps track of information in a cryptographically secure way. I think that this has gotten out of hand because of all of the get rich quick schemes, and that's fair. It's happened....a lot. But does that invalidate the whole endeavor?

The current exchange system has rent seeking vultures sitting on top. Visa, MasterCard, these fuckers sit there and take a percentage of every transaction that theY fascilitate. What are they doing? Keeping a ledger. We trust them to do it accurately and pay them steeply to do it. Now we have a self managing ledger that requires no trust from anyone. Can you really tell me there is ZERO use case potential here?