The suffocating irony of this forum being called "Hacker News" when it is filled with comments like this never fails to amaze me. A truly unimaginative bunch.
Take your favorite payment provider (PayPal, Stripe, whichever bank provides your Visa/MasterCard, etc.), and look at their terms of service. Enumerate all the prohibited usages. From that list, delete illegal activities, of course.
The remaining items on the list are your practical examples of use cases. It's roughly the set of things that are legal, but that big corporations have decided you can't do because they're morally questionable or financially risky.
* Pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery and other media) depicting nudity or explicit sexual acts
* Online dating services
* Bankruptcy attorneys and bail bonds
* Sports forecasting or odds making with a monetary or material prize
* Charity sweepstakes and raffles for the explicit purpose of fundraising
* Unauthorized sale of brand name or designer products or services
And so on. All these are legal, but in a cashless society without decentralized currency, they might as well be illegal because no centralized payment processor will allow them.
But hey, Bitcoin can also be used for CSAM, unlike VPNs, Tor, or cash, which is why the HN cognoscenti condemns it.
Besides the payment processor I use allowing these things afaik(but that might be an EU vs USA thing): isn't the point of blockchain that everything is immutable and a full history of every transaction is kept? That means that if your wallet(or w/e you use to pay) is ever connected to you as a person, everyone will know what "morally questionable or financially risky" things you did in the past, which unless you don't care about that will still cause you to be really careful using your money on these type of things(honestly: even more careful than right now probably).
You could be careful to not leak your wallet address of course, but if we'd truly be a cashless society without decentralized currency you'd want to buy your groceries with it too, or order computer parts. What prevents these shops you buy from from having a security issue and leaking your wallet address? You could have a separate wallet per shop, but you need to get money into it somehow which can be traced as well(because it's the blockchain).
Note: I'm not an expert on blockchain/crypto, there might be ways to mitigate this, I'm just legit curious as to how this would be solved in a world like this.
Answer #1: relax, they already know everything about you. With every interaction in society, you leave some combination of name, email, address, purchase history, security-camera footage, license-plate footage, IP address, cell-tower history, credit-card number, Venmo likes, etc. The history of a unit of digital currency certainly helps fill in gaps. But whoever "they" are to you, they already know.
Answer #2: No single tool is a one-size-fits-all answer to privacy. TCP/IP needs TLS for transport-layer privacy, DNSSEC and TLS certs for authenticity, VPNs and Tor for protection against traffic analysis, throwaway accounts to segregate one's personal workstreams, and so on. The privacy of the internet results from an ever-evolving collection of tools.
Bitcoin is TCP/IP for money. It's a pipe that allows transfer of value from one place to another -- that's it. It doesn't provide anonymity, but unlike centralized payment-processing systems, it allows the creation of tools on top of it that could provide a practical level of anonymity. A Bitcoin mixer, for example, is comparable to a VPN.
Note that if VPNs or TLS were invented today, rather than decades ago, the Hive Mind would be demonizing them as tools for criminals and/or the kind of person none of us admits to being (purchasers of porn, etc.). We take a lot of internet privacy tools for granted, mostly because we're accustomed to them, but also because they were grandfathered before September 2001.
I'm pointing out a longstanding inconsistency on HN. Every think-of-the-children argument against cryptocurrency also applies to many privacy-focused tools. The loudest commenters in the HN community are anti-censorship, but they espouse the belief that anyone against censorship of money must be a criminal.
He's right. There's no reason, for instance, that CSAM media can't go on the blockchain as a block - and then everyone plays plausible deniability because the "blockchain is immutable". The internet is written in ink, the blockchain is written in unwashable graffiti that many people are taking pictures of to save their own copy of it at any given time.
Preserving privacy, reliable transactions with no, i repeat, no bank or govmnt involvement, no kyc. No/low fees (on some currencies), public immutable databases...
Somehow I'm living day to day without needing to think about being associated with a service I am paying for. I totally get your point about minimizing interference, but there is absolutely no way anyone thinks Monero is a good solution to this problem who isn't involved in some shady business.
Wasn't able to find a single article mentioning use under opressive regimes. It does seem to be the most popular ransomware crypto now though so there is that
Well, you are - and I mean this with as little offense as possible - only entertaining the blockchain from a likely incredibly privileged position. Consider people living under an oppressive regime. Things you are considering perfectly normal, like freely living as a homosexual, may be a punishable offense and illegal for its citizens. "Illegal nonsense" uses of the blockchain may be live-saving privacy for them.
I really think Monero in particular deserves way more criticism for their practice. Bitcoin is one thing, Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals, you don't need to be a communications expert to get that premise. I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose. Atleast with Bitcoin and Ethereum you can get buy some legitimate things like VPNs or NFTs
You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption.
I haven't bought much with Monero, but I always offer it because I adore the premise. I personally think its great, one of the few truly valuable cryptocurrencies.
Monero was built and used for privacy purposes but it gets abused by cybercriminals for malicious purposes. Just like all cryptocurrencies and even plain paper cash.
People abandon all analysis when it comes to Tor. Yes, Tor serves a legitimate purpose (in contrast to Monero, noone has changed my mind yet), but I'd argue that value would also be fullfilled without onion services. If I have to gess 99 % of onion services are illegal activity. The only exception to this rule is SecureDrop which I am certain could be realized with just a regular server too. You need to self host it anyways.
I use Monero to donate to FLOSS software projects and as a way of paying friends without surveillance capitalism demanding I tell them what my private transactions are for. If these aren't "legitimate purposes" then there no point in engaging in this conversation. Maybe you're happy with being subject to corporate panopticons of Venmo/Cash App/whatever but I'd rather not engage with companies that seek to demand an ever larger pool of information from me.
Onion services provide authentication and NAT traversal while maintaining security and anonymity. Just because you aren't using that functionality doesn't mean it doesn't have a use.
How do you intend to have a clearnet application that can stand up to the same threat model that SecureDrop does?
> Maybe you're happy with being subject to corporate panopticons of Venmo/Cash App/whatever
Get this, I've never used either of these services before. And the even crazier part is that if I did, they wouldn't know what I'm giving my friends money for anyways. And lastly, just use cash if your decision making is being opressed by the surveillance capitalism. Monero serves no purpose that hasn't already been fullfilled by a non-dubious measure
> How do you intend to have a clearnet application that can stand up to the same threat model that SecureDrop does?
I don't know, ask Stripe maybe how they haven't gotten any customer data stolen yet with their massive threat profile while not using Tor in any capacity
Silly me, I didn't realize that I can send cash over the Internet.
Stripe's threat modeling is nothing like SecureDrop's. Stripe has plenty of identifying information that they would be forced to surrender upon subpoena that SecureDrop simply wouldn't be able to furnish because it never has that information to begin with. How is this not apparent? Comparing the two reeks of bad faith.
> just use cash if your decision making is being opressed by the surveillance capitalism
This is morally equivalent to:
- "just send a letter through the post if you don't like EU's chat control"
- "just read the newspaper if you don't like Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts"
I'd like to believe we can get the benefits of 21st century tech without giving up our privacy to get it. Thanks to Monero that belief is a reality. You're welcome to stick with cash and the pony express if you like, but it's not a great look painting everyone who disagrees with your values as a criminal.
So Tor and I2P also should be criticized? IMO, something being away enough from the government that it starts to get abused shows how secure/private it is.
Tor and I2P allow the free flow of information, which is a net good for society. Monero allows the free flow of money which is a net negative; it effectively destroys the rule of law because those with enough money can freely commission crimes that benefit them.
Ironically Tor is mostly funded by the US government. 80% in 2012. They are still a significant donor however I'm not sure if the percentage is still so high.
Today you are on the right side of the fence. You buy things that are permitted so its all good. I wonder if you would keep the same opinion, once that changes.
Speaking of third party keyboards, I’m still upset about what happened to Nintype[0]. I’ve never ever been able to type faster on mobile than with it’s intuitive hybrid input style of sliding and tapping, paired with AI that was actually good. It used to be quite performant, fully customizable, and it worked beautifully as a replacement for default on jailbroken iOS.
Today, it’s buggy $5 abandonware that only makes me sad when I am reminded of it.
EDIT: Here[1] is a blog post that claims it's still the best keyboard in 2023. I actually might give it another shot... Not holding my breath though.
*EDIT: Looks like another dedicated fan has actually taken it upon themself to revive the project, under the new name Keyboard71[2].
I’m really considering repurchasing (I definitely owned it previously, no idea what happened), can you describe specifically what the main bugs are for you? I’d be happy if I could use it solely for occasionally writing long notes, not as a replacement for all text inputs.
Really not looking to burn another $5, I’d greatly appreciate any thoughts/concerns at all.
It’s simply way too easy to get caught nowadays. I don’t think there’s much more to it, honestly. Even if an individual makes a concerted effort to avoid technology (phone, computer, etc), the sprawling surveillance infra only encompasses more each day.
People may not have any particular 'impulse' to violence in a stable, safe society, but may be all too ready to participate in violence in a violent society. Society does not solely reflect the people in it, people also reflect the society they're in.
If they wanted to accept crypto, would there be anything stopping them from using Monero at least, instead? I wonder why they would ignore the major actually anonymous token.
they’ve been slowing progress down for 10 years straight now
but don’t worry you’ve been able to pay bitcoin invoices with monero and everything else for nearly as long too, just use a mixer and set the destination asset and address to the one on the invoice
As a casual Monero user, who's the Bitcoin maxi you're speaking of? Fluffypony? Seth? I remember reading about someone on the Monero core team who started working for a large Bitcoin company but don't remember who it was or what the issue was.
Some countries like India make owning monero illegal so it's not an option for everyone. How they're going to prove it is another story of course. But it is what it is.
> Some countries like India make owning monero illegal so it's not an option for everyone.
Owning cryptocurrency is not illegal in India. There is no ban on any cryptocurrencies in India. There is a hefty tax deduction at source on any transactions. Cryptocurrencies are not recognized as legal tender in India, which is the case in many other countries.
Oh that sounds pretty neat! In particular would make Ctrl+Shift+Esc easier to press to open the task manager, using the actual left-ctrl button for its intended purpose. I have pretty small hands so even pressing shift+capslock+esc is a bit of a reach. Thanks for linking this!
...and strangely, even quality sites like HN take the given headline instead of the lede. Some subreddits have a way to indicate 'misleading headline' – could be a great feature across all consolidators/curatorial social media.
