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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I’m more skeptical than most that self driving will be properly solved anytime in the next few decades, but I really doubt the article’s claims that it will be able to claim much modeshare from bikes and transit.

    Firstly, we already have and have had autonomous vehicles for nearly as long as we have had vehicles, their called taxis and carpools. Making these potentially cheaper, though in practice I doubt it since a taxi’s costs are spread over all its users while a car has to be paid by just you, does not change the fact that they are less convienent than being able to show up and hop on like a bus, or the immunity to traffic delays of rail. Indeed the proposed system of distant out of city parking lots would take more planning than just parking your own vehicle today in most places, as you have to call or order ahead with AVs to have them ready for instead of waking to your car and jumping in. Similarly, getting stuck in traffic does not get much more fun simply because someone else is driving, especially if you can’t even talk to them.

    The arguement for them replacing bikes is even worse, because one of the few things proper self driving vehicles are already pretty good at thanks to 360 ultrasonic and lidar sensors at is not blindly running down bikes, and a future with widespread adoption would also imply that most other vehicles have similar driver assistance tech, and as such more people will feel safe biking even in places with shit bike infrastructure. Meanwhile most people who were going to use a bike for a trip will not choose driving over bikeing just because they can get someone else to come pick them up.

    I could see it having an effect on modeshare in places with really shit and infrequent transit, but the whole point of rapid transit is that it is more rapid than taking a car. If your transit system is slower and worse than waiting ten minutes in the rain for an Uber, fix your terrible transit system, because that really should be a low bar to clear.






  • Yes lightning, the network of centralized trusted third party banks that are needed to make bitcoin useable so long as you deposit all the bitcoin you want to use into one of these centralized banks first, at which point they can make bank to bank transfers without having any involvement with the actual bitcoin network at all.

    Or you could do basically the same process with an actual Debit card, which does the same thing but can be used in actual stores.

    You also need to note that for something posturing itself as a currency, the fact that you either have to wait hours or days for the price per transaction to come down or spend an even more absurd transaction fee on you’re cup of coffee before you can check out is actually a rather fundamental problem.



  • I don’t think it’s obvious that a tool for loaning money to businesses would be primarily used for loaning money to businesses trying to solve problems with the tool itself.

    I don’t think the internet has really changed all that much when it comes to due diligence. Maybe it’s a little easier to do background checks or find a person’s previous projects, but you still need an trusted third party to audit a company, you still need to be sure who is legally liable for if things go wrong, etc…

    Neglecting that a lot of companies don’t actually want every person’s pay, every dime they spend for a luncheon, and every thing R&D buys to be publicly available to their competitors, it’s still not actually much help for verifying and auditing their financials because nearly all fraud already relies on people entering false information to the computer about what the transaction was for or why it was made, not anything that could be verified by the chain.


  • Um, no. Traditional markets have financial related companies, but you’ll have to show me where you’re getting the idea the finance sector makes up the majority of the traditional market and as such it is no different than the crypto space where finance makes up nearly the entire market.

    I also don’t think that the existence of the internet really changed much when it comes to the need for rules for soliciting investment from the public such as providing investors accounting figures and legal accountability. Nor has it changed the fact that cryptocurrencies haven’t changed the process for gaining the investment necessary to start a new bakery or other small business and never will provide a pathway to do so, and as such hasn’t really changed much at all when it comes to providing customers with more access to investment loans outside of more crypto businesses.

    A lot of the scandals you listed weren’t done under the current market regulation, but rather directly led to the current market regulation at the behest of the little guys who got screwed over and pressured politicians into passing it, and as such I just don’t see how removing the protections for the little guy is ment to benefit them over the rich.

    I mean surely then the rich would be opposed to the crypto and loosening regulations rather than being the ones most heavily pushing and lobbying the government for them?



  • It means that despite being fifteen years old, it still takes more electricity for a single bitcoin transaction than to drive an electric SUV from Florida to California, cost per single transaction has still spiked over 50 USD twice in the last six months, and it remains too prone to wild inflation and deflation for any serious business to actually price anything in.

    In other words, it has the same inherent value it always has, none at all.


  • You realize that the things listed on the NASDAQ actually represent more than just an entery in a database, right? Like the groups listed on there tend to make physical objects and software that does things beyond move things that can be traded for currency around?

    You also realize that the NASDAQ, without all the protections and basic rules the public forced it to adopt after vast numbers of little guys got screwed out of all their money, isn’t actually that great of a pitch? At least not to anyone but the far right uber rich libertarians that hold majority control of the crypto space.

    We are talking about a technology that is about as old as smartphones, but which has still yet to see any widespread use to solve a problem it did not itself create.