"Crypto art" is literally just "numbered prints, but each time I sign my name I also promise to burn down a local park." In case you are fortunate enough to have not heard about this latest con: Someone has convinced a bunch of innumerate artists that Dunning-Krugerrands are not a planet-incinerating Ponzi scheme. I've had to start blocking them on the Twits to avoid hearing about it, even ...| www.jwz.org
Their argument is, "Bitcoin is 'green' because this oil well was just going to vent all that methane into the atmosphere anyway" -- or -- "It was on fire when I got here." 'Absurd' video of bitcoin mine hooked to an oil well sparks outrage: In states like Texas, where energy regulations are laxer, natural gas by-product can be vented, intentionally releasing gases, predominately potent ...| www.jwz.org
Looking at you, Internet Archive. jackdanger: As the price goes up it's worth it for miners to spend more to mine a coin. Even if it costs them enormously in energy costs. Will they? Guaranteed. As long as someone who wants to better their finances can make a fortune destroying a common good at least one psychopath will do that. [...] What can we do? Treat Bitcoin like we (should) treat the ...| www.jwz.org
The best comment on the Signal Iran thing is from N-Gate: "A chat app based on a protocol that supports federation wants to borrow your computer instead of allowing federation."| www.jwz.org
Latacora: Stop Using Encrypted Email: Most email encryption on the Internet is performative, done as a status signal or show of solidarity. Ordinary people don't exchange email messages that any powerful adversary would bother to read, and for those people, encrypted email is LARP security. It doesn't matter whether or not these emails are safe, which is why they're encrypted so shoddily. ...| www.jwz.org
Facebook Launching Its Own Cryptocurrency: The company is "recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system on the back of its gigantic social network." And the Journal suggests that the project "threatens to upend the traditional, lucrative plumbing of e-commerce and would likely be the most mainstream application yet of ...| www.jwz.org
Every now and then the Internet Archive posts some hype imploring people to donate to them in Bitcoin. Now, the Archive is a great organization, and one to whom I regularly donate actual cash money, but this is horrible and I wish they would stop. The Archive, and their Siamese twin The Long Now Foundation, are putatively about long-term thinking, but there is little in the modern world more ...| www.jwz.org
Drew DeVault: I don't trust Signal: I expect a tool which claims to be secure to actually be secure. I don't view "but that makes it harder for the average person" as an acceptable excuse. If Edward Snowden and Bruce Schneier are going to spout the virtues of the app, I expect it to actually be secure when it matters - when vulnerable people using it to encrypt sensitive communications are ...| www.jwz.org
When you install Signal, it asks for access to your contacts, and says very proudly, "we don't upload your contacts, it all stays on your phone." And then it spams all of your contacts who have Signal installed, without asking your first. And it shares your phone number with everyone in your contacts who has Signal installed. And then when you scream ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME and delete your| www.jwz.org
Top Facebook executive defended data collection, and warned that Facebook could get people killed: So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. [...] That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the ...| www.jwz.org