Interesting, but not surprising considering all the pressure from governments regarding Libra. I wonder if Facebook will ever back down from Libra considering how popular it is, or if they're going to adopt a "rain or shine" attitude and go forward with it regardless of what happens?
Facebook will never back down from Libra, they'll just release a "watered down" version of Libra that's essentially just store credit like "Amazon Bucks" and then sunset it after it's forgotten.
I don't think so, there is no way it would achieve mainstream adoption if there was a potential tax liability for users spending their after tax dollars.
The only press coverage I see about Libra is how governments are not gonna let this run and a bunch of other negative remarks (possibly drawn from the fact that this is a Facebok project which is seen as am evil company by many).
I don’t understand how is that valuable? If that’s valuable then all companies with bad press would increase their valuations. Unlike the popular saying there’s actually such thing as “bad press”.
I think governments actually want Libra, what we're seeing is the role of Facebook in all of this being forcefully reshaped to better serve the needs of governments. Facebook will be compelled to give up some of the control and access over this new identity system in exchange for being allowed to operate it.
Which governments? Libra doesn’t benefit any government.
While Libra is a “real” cryptocurrency (distributed, any user can exchange, etc) as opposed to schemes like Beenz, it’s closer to company scrip than to Bitcoin’s model of “digital gold”.
Also - despite all the white-papers and hired evangelists - Facebook would still de-facto control Libra: not directly, of course - but they’d control the specification and the reference implementation - which means they’d control the consensus system that underpins distributed cryptocurrencies - so if they want to switch to adopting a proof-of-stake system (i.e. good for whales and hoarders) or intentionally introducing a backdoor’d cryptography scheme - or even adding address blacklisting.
That last part is probably the most important: I imagine most governments (especially western ones) really want address blacklisting: it provides a Libra with an equivalent of today’s bank account seizures - and it’s easy to ask for: you don’t want to be seen allowing terrorists, money-launderers and CP porn sellers to keep hold of their money.
Finally, Facebook does not have a substantial corporate presence in every country - which means that governments without the ability to sue or prosecute FB for malfeasance probably /don’t/ want to endorse anything FB does.
"Address blacklisting" -- you just explained why governments actually DO want Libra. They will get that from Facebook. They will not get that from real cryptocurrency.
You need another human to make use of any kind of money. This human will be subject to some governments regulations, so it's entirely possible to implement some form of address blacklisting (in the form of some "due diligence" requirement when receiving money) without a technical solution. No cryptocurrency can escape government control.
I personally hope key governments deep-six it. Facebook has shown itself to be untrustworthy for personal data - in what interesting ways will they abuse a custodial role on a currency?
> Governments are as untrustworthy as Facebook but more scary as they have a monopoly on violence and can take away your life.
That’s an extreme and reductionist position - and I feel it’s an incorrect position.
The state does not have a monopoly on violence - certainly not in practice, and in most democracies today the state is expressly forbidden from using any kind of physical force (domestically, at least) excepting emergencies (e.g. police shootouts). Corporations /can/ be just as bad: look at brutal Fortune 500-sponsored union-suppression in South America happening today, for example.
Expect for very few exceptions like defending your home , self defence etc, you are even not allowed even show force let alone act violently.
State does not need to use violence in stable democracies they just have make sure ppl know they can to get everyone in line.
Also violence is not always physical. Threatening incarceration/ social humiliation / jail time for parole violations/ job loss and other economic harm etc is common tactic law enforcement employ to get cooperation.
Finally the state also offers the candy of lower jail time reduced charges and assorted other incentives for cooperation all of it beneficial because of the harm associated with the alternatives.
A monopoly on legal violence isn't about only the state legally being able to be violent, but it's also the state being able to outline who can legally become violent and in which circumstances. Which would include things like outlining that you can defend your home - so this isn't really an exception to the statement.
I don't find the phrase all that compelling. What is legal in a given place is based upon the strongest coalition of people that cares about that place. When speaking at this level of social organization its basically might makes right. A state with no police and no military has a monopoly on nothing.
They'd need to pay more than the other robbers, sure. Shouldn't really be a problem for them, though.
Something funny happens when the monetary contribution from a company to a country/government moves from millions to billions. It changes from a potential bribe that people want to keep quiet about to an investment that people want to boast about. And yet it's trivial to siphon between 10-70% of that "investment" into private pockets depending on the country.
Proxies too. Teenagers install proxy modules on their own phones and APs all the time across the globe. This “illegal crypto” is simple a series of mathematical algorithms.
> ServeTheHome asked Oracle why it chose to create a cluster of Raspberry Pis instead of using a virtualized Arm server and one company rep said simply that "...a big cluster is cool."
Honestly that's a totally valid reason to make something like this. This is super cool.
A very interesting statement. The Hong Kong ISP Association makes a number of very good points. Much of Hong Kong's economy relies on the open internet (like most of the world) and censoring it would do it much harm.
It is the worst redesign I've ever seen on a major website like this for a number of reasons. It's needlessly heavy on resources, it's slow, it's difficult to navigate, it's filled to the brim with ads, it's uninspired and takes away all of the charm of the old design in favor of making Reddit look like a more generic social media, it doesn't work with the wayback machine, and that's just scratching the surface.
It's such a awful design. I've explicitly opted out of the new design on my account, and I use old.reddit.com whenever I'm not signed in.
It's also needlessly redundant. It has two completely different viewers for comments.
When you click the comments link on a story from the story list, it opens the comments in some kind of overlay on top of the story list. There is a "close" link near the top that dismisses the overlay to get back to the stories. The story list is still loaded in the browser, just not visible because the comments are in front of it.
Well, not visible to you. The story list is still visible to the browser's "search on page" feature, often making such searches useless. Also, scrolling in the overlay is way off on some browsers.
If you hit refresh, you get the more useful comment view. It's just the comments, without the story list lurking behind, and with unmolested scrolling.
They should just scrap this redesign, except for the fancier post editor. Port that to the old reddit and call it done.
My 2018 Macbook Pro i5 can't handle it. I get the "this site is draining your battery" warning far to often. I can't watch Netflix and browse Reddit at the same time anymore
if you think that's terrible, check out the mobile browser version... It's full of pop ups that remind you to download their app, and none of the v.reddit or giphycat links work :/
I’ve noticed that about the giphy and v.reddit links. It’s so ridiculous. Their OWN image and video embeds don’t work on their own site on a stock standard iPhone with safari.
This redesign has been years in the making and a solid half of the basic features used every day don’t work.
It’s probably the single worst redesign I’ve ever seen a major site do.
You can, but the problem with using old.reddit.com is that clicking on reddit.com links (e.g. from reddit comments) will take you back to the new design. With the opt-out, you get the old design no matter what.
I think people have even go so far as to make browser extensions to automatically rewrite "reddit.com" to "old.reddit.com".
The redesign looks... well, I don't even know where to start, but it's pretty clear that users aren't the focus and they've sold out completely to corporate interests.
I'd actually be OK with some of this if they were forthright and honest about this shift in focus, but they're trying to say that the new design is 'better', etc. That's nonsense and lies.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, just remembered: IIRC the failure to link properly to 'old.reddit.com' on links that Reddit have full control over was registered as a 'bug' instead of an obvious way to drive traffic to the redesign.
EDIT#2: This is also what drove people to write browser extensions. The value of reddit has always been in the communities, not the design (or whatever).
Redirect extension to always get old.reddit.com. I've been using it for years without issue. It's one of the very few extensions I have that is enabled in Incognito mode.
But I still feel your pain whenever I'm on another computer without the extension and forget to type the old url.
Oh god, JS version of gmail is unusable on firefox.
Takes minutes(!) to load(multiple powerful machines - i7 3770k, i5 6th gen and i7 7700, tested on fresh OS installs of both Win10 and Ubuntu) - it fakes loaded status usually by displaying your last viewed page - which is very annoying as it has no loading bar nor a throbber.
It is horrible when you are waiting for 2FA code in email, or when resetting a password.
It's super cool that the game is being updated 10 years later to effectively remaster it AND make modding easier! I wish more developers were like this, but I can see why that might be difficult (which makes this all the more impressive)
Just because you don't use or need those features doesn't mean that everyone feels the same.
Many people use any enjoy the features that steam provides. For example, I enjoy the ability to go to someone's profile and be able to instantly join their game. I enjoy the ability to organize events through events in steam groups. Many people I know use the Steam Workshop to share their fan-made content or the Marketplace to sell their items.
It's not just those features in the client though. Steam also has a number of integrations that developers can make in their games, such as achievements, integrating their multiplayer with steam (allowing for the aforementioned joining via profile), cloud saves, controller support, etc.
Right now Epic is missing many of these features and more. With that being said, what reason do I have to use Epic over Steam besides the fact that Epic has a few exclusives?
It promotes athleticism, teamwork, and is generally enjoyable to those around it. Sure, some schools may invest a little too much into sports, but that doesn't mean that schools should drop sports entirely.
No, it's a major strain on the school and the school life. Schools tend to promote sports over other things. Things like "school spirit" are legit retarded.
I remember a few years ago I shared a Google spreadsheet among a few coworkers so we could all see and edit the same thing.
The amazing utility of being able to see the location of everyone's active cell, and seeing each person as a different colour, was just wonderful. Combined with a voice channel and it was more useful than a face to face meeting in a conference room.
This inspires me to try to get the editor sharing running for my tiny DevOps team.
