Wednesday, February 23

Geek

Daily News Stuff 23 February 2022

5G Or Not 5G Edition

Top Story

  • Internet is still out.  Playing telephone tag with the idiots at my ISP - how the hell can you run an internet business when your only support is by phone?

    Meanwhile I have a 5G phone, a 5G SIM card, and a 5G plan.  What I do not have is a 5G signal, because that would make life too easy.  If I go upstairs and stand by the window I can just about get a second bar on the 4G signal sometimes.

    At least I have a much better mobile plan.  The bandwidth fees I was paying would have quickly added up to the cost of the new phone.


  • I was wrong, we need crypto.  (Hey.com)

    A heartfelt and un-woke post from the guy behind Ruby on Rails, a long-time crypto-skeptic (justifiably) now shocked into being a true believer:
    This is crazy. Absolutely bonkers. Terrifying.

    I still can't believe that this is the protest that would prove every Bitcoin crank a prophet. And for me to have to slice a piece of humble pie, and admit that I was wrong on crypto's fundamental necessity in Western democracies.

    And that it was the Canadians who brought this on? You might as well have told me that it was really the Care Bears who ran Abu Ghraib.
    I work mostly with Python, though I do like Ruby.  Might be worth taking a look at Rails even though - yep - it does have a Code of Cancer.


  • In a cashless society, freezing someone's bank account is a prison sentence.  (The Hub)
    The fact that weaponizing the financial system against nonviolent protestors and their distant supporters was the government’s tool of first resort should worry anyone who understands the role of civil disobedience in democracy. I would like to think Minister Steven Guilbeault, who was once arrested for scaling the CN Tower to hang a Greenpeace banner, lost a little sleep when he considered that disrupting critical infrastructure is still a common tactic of his environmentalist comrades. But somehow I doubt it. If there is one thing we haven’t seen much of in Ottawa recently, it’s principled consistency.
    Very true.


Tech News


Party Like It's 1980-is Video of the Day





Disclaimer: Dirty creature come my way, from the bottom of a crypto lake.  Selling off all my apes, think I've made a big mistake.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:01 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 723 words, total size 7 kb.

1 In regards to crypto being the savior of backing in the free world, I recently followed a link to a Doomberg article that finally put into words the misgiving I'd been feeling about that: "Your bank accounts have been frozen, credit cards canceled, and access to your brokerage account denied. Further, imagine you have accumulated some Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet (i.e., on a flash drive in your possession), carefully ensuring that it is outside Trudeau’s reach. How are you going to pay your mortgage, car payment, tuition expenses, or buy groceries with it? The answer is you can’t. Does that wallet represent a store of value that might be reactivated in the future should the government change its stance towards you, or is itself changed altogether? Absolutely. Does it represent a practical medium of exchange, one that is useful during this personal crisis? Absolutely not.
At a time of utmost need, cryptocurrencies have proven they are not money. If they can’t be used to transact in the main, they’re just bits of data on a flash drive. Crypto proponents will argue that off-exchange peer-to-peer transfers are still possible and this enables bartering, or that you could move to a country that more widely accepts cryptocurrencies as payment. To these critics, we say thank you for highlighting the exceptions that prove our thesis. If that is all you have left, it is clear how much the government has taken away from you and how feeble cryptocurrencies are as a hedge."

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, February 24 2022 12:22 AM (UMMAA)

2 There are crypto ATMs now.  How widespread they are, and how much use they'd be in such a case is an open question, but it's a start, I guess.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 24 2022 02:47 AM (Z0GF0)

3 Also, today I learned Woolworth's still exists, at least online.  I think the last brick and mortar one I've seen was about 40 years ago in the town I grew up in.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 24 2022 02:48 AM (Z0GF0)

4 There are places 'round here that advertise that they accept bitcoin.  I mean, it's pretty volatile, but cave canem and all that.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, February 24 2022 04:12 AM (LADmw)

5 The ATM I saw had a brochure, and if I remember correctly, it accepted several kinds.  (I just looked and it seems like they accept BTC, ETH, Litecoin, Dash, and...drumroll...Dogecoin.)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 24 2022 07:35 AM (Z0GF0)

6 It's not anonymous, though.  At a minimum you have to receive a code through SMS, and buying higher amounts requires increasing levels of ID verification.
I played around with one a while back and I *do* like that they have a warning before letting you do anything, that says "anyone asking you to send them bitcoin is scamming you.  Don't do it, and call us instead at an 800 number."  It specifically mentions the most common things:  SSN fraud, taxes, cars, ebay, airbnb, etc., and a separate warning about online romance scams.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 24 2022 07:47 AM (Z0GF0)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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