utopiah

I'm for it in theory. I explored it for a while, since at least March 2010, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Bitcoin

But, sadly, I'm against it in practice. You can see that the same page hasn't been updated since 2016. This is because even though is does work, technically speaking (which is in itself a feat!), socially speaking the impact is IMHO negative. The main use case is speculation about itself and it comes at a huge side effect, namely energy usage (cf IEA's https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/bitcoin-energy-use-estimates ). This isn't even about taking into consideration much worst usages, e.g money laundering. Another difference since the early days is that traditional institutions have started to use or sell them. This is very positive in terms of trust, namely that such institutions do a lot of checks because they are legally required too. This is though quite negative from my own ideological standpoint on the very raise d'etre of cryptocurrency because I was initially seeing it through the lens of anarchy, where participants in a system rely on each other and manage their own structure. Few interesting projects happened along those lines, both physically and digitally, but in practice those are, in terms of volume of transactions (and thus energy consumption) marginal. They are mere demonstrations.

So yes I was excited by the prospect, both socially and technologically, but since I've became disillusioned. Cool idea, even cool implementation, boring usage, literally life threatening effect to our one single planet. Not worth it.

I will add this retrospective to my Bitcoin page to reflect that soon.

PS: I understand that Bitcoin is not all cryptocurrencies. I also dabbled (and by that I mean code, including making my own transactions to explore smart contract before it was in the main blockchain) with other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum. I also had few assets which I liquidated a little while ago from at least 4 different cryptocurrencies. I'm using Bitcoin as a simplification for others because that's where the value literally is today. I'd also argue, which is just me speculating here, that if Bitcoin falls, all other follows even if they'd be technically viable.

At least they are very clear about what data is at risk here, namely "OneRep receives your

• first and last name,
• email address,
• phone number,
• physical address and
• date of birth

in order to scan data broker sites to find your personal data and request its removal." cf https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/subscription-services/

It's indeed not a good look anyway to be partnering (without doing much that sharing your brand, and thus trust invested in you) with somebody apparently solving the problem... they themselves help fuel.

I wouldn't just trust random Lemmy users (no offense) but instead check for actual fields, e.g stylometry or writeprint, and from there check the state of the art. Not being an expert would make that tricky so I would take a recent published papers, e.g https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.11849 to understand the challenge. As is always the case they'll review the field, e.g section 2 here, and clarify the 2 sides of the arm race, here Obfuscation/Deobfuscation. The former in 3.2 mentions examples of techniques authors estimate to be good starting point, e.g writeprintsRFC. I'd then search for such tools if they don't directly provide link to open-source repository, e.g theirs https://github.com/reginazhai/Authorship-Deobfuscation . I would then try a recent one that I can easily setup, e.g via Docker, and give it a go. I would then read the rest of the paper, see who cites it, and try to get a more up to date version.

TL;DR: I don't know but there is dedicated research which result I'd trust more than the opinion of strangers who are probably not expert.

Indeed, thanks for asking OP for a clarification of why an actual alternative is needed because, to me at least, on criteria like "privacy, security, maintanability" it is IMHO the best compromise there is.

• lynx is super fast. Sure it's command line and does not display images.
• If you need images netsurf can do that.
• I personally use Wolvic on XR headset and compiled it for the Lynx R1 just this week.

Finally if you want to make your own browser I can recommend https://browser.engineering

PS: otherwise I'm using Firefox with Vimperator so I can't help much there. I do think Firefox, and Mozilla behind it, is not perfect but provides a better alternative than Chromium based browsers. I also do worry that if nobody does use Firefox, or at least support Mozilla, somehow then it will simply not exist anymore and thus all alternatives relying on it, e.g Waterfox or LibreWolf, will not be viable anymore.

Interesting to see China always doing bigger infrastructures projects. They are pouring money in, great stimulus for the regional economy (despite some cases of misuse) but gets two questions :

• can such project become economically sustainable enough to last
• can others outside of China benefit from such expenses

BTW I can't imagine China being self-sufficient on high-end chip production. They'd have first to catch-up to TSMC then to ASML. I'm not saying it's theoretically impossible but the little I did learn about R&D in China is how heavily it relies on the CCP and how poorly information flows there, which I believe in such a sector where logistics and research is so complex, I don't believe can realistically be achieved, even while literally printing money to fund it.

From a competition standpoint it'd be best if ASML wasn't a monopoly. Ideally though the competition would come from a state that is genuinely democratic, at least not authoritarian. Interesting to consider in the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_World%27s_Most_Critical_Technology but yes it's obviously both an economical and political challenge.

Overall if democracies try to use this monopoly as a political tool and yet they don't themselves have enough capability to allocate the output from the sanctions then it can only be a short term solution, otherwise they risk hurting such a powerful bottleneck.

PS: I have ASML stocks so economically speaking I'd prefer if sanctions wouldn't hurt their bottom line. Yet, if their sales comes from actors that are belligerent to other nations, e.g Taiwan for the 1 China program resulting in its "silicon shield", then I'm fine with a loss. ASML has as a corporation to maximize its return on investment but... somehow being ignorant of the geopolitical risk is simply not responsible.

Well ThinkPad back in the days weren't cheap either but then even a 2nd hand one could still last a while and one could still get them fixed.

Doctrow himself is pretty clear about this. Interoperability is the way you fight back against enshitification.

funny that's not what I just read in his FT piece "There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labour. To reverse enshittification and guard against its re-emergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these." published just yesterday.

Also FWIW we absolutely are locked into GitHub... because others are too. That's why M$ bought it in the first place, classic strategy from Redmond. I go use Gitlab, have my own Gitea instance, but in practice where do people talk on issues? Github. That's why even entities like Mozilla or KDE that have entire CI and bug system outside of Github still often have mirrors there. Because that's sadly where most of us end up being locked.

... but if you take inflation into account if the price is stable then goods are getting relatively more expensive.

Check your ISP might actually provide such packages. You might even already be benefiting from it but never used it.

I'd prefer if WebMonetization would be more broadly adopted so that all participants in the chain get their share, even if pennies indeed it still would be right and does add up.