@pre@boing.world2025-11-22 10:39:50
Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
@floheinstein@chaos.social2025-11-22 15:38:35
Which version best conveys the message "ISO 8601. Every over date/time format is inferior"?
Based on different versions of the original logo I made multiple attempts. One of them will become a sticker. White on red, Blue on White or White on Blue?
#iso8601 #iso8601ultras
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-02-20 20:34:38
Is building an LLM inherently problematic? Not necessarily, but there's no good way to do it under capitalism. Is using an local LLM funding these evil companies? No. It's not.
Spelling and grammar checking is one of the few uses of LLMs that is not based on fundamentally failing to understand what an LLM actually is. A statistical model is gonna be *really good* at flagging things that are probably typos (low probability areas). There will be false positives, which is fine if you're actually paying attention...
@kctipton@mas.to2026-01-22 06:50:35
The Gospel According to ICE: How Christian Nationalists Betray The Faith They Claim to Follow | Tim Hjersted https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-gospel-according-to-ice/
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-21 03:57:27
Trump’s IRS chief reorganizes tax agency days before filing season
The Internal Revenue Service will reorganize its senior ranks
days before this year’s tax filing season opens
and try to use technology to become more efficient,
the Trump administration’s IRS leader Frank Bisignano told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Administration officials named Bisignano the IRS’s chief executive,
a role that does not formally exist in the agency’s governing structur…
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2026-02-21 19:55:38
There’s definitely a hopeful feeling in having room to worry about Space Camp fundraising right now, instead of, say, ICE staging at the local Target parking lot yet again (with Target’s tacit blessing, damn them). It’s been quiet in the city these last few days. Fingers crossed.
Hopeful, but also melancholy: even if ICE does in fact draw down to pre-Dec levels, our “after” is not really going to come for a long time — and when it does, it will feel more like a scar than a sunrise.
/end
@floheinstein@chaos.social2025-11-22 07:36:04
I just realized that the International Organization for Standardization ISO uses a picture from Switzerland to illustrate their popular standards page about ISO8601.
But do you know where it was taken?
https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html
@pre@boing.world2025-12-22 17:18:37
The mechanics sorted out filling the adblue tank.
The warnings have stopped beeping and the 10 l bottle that was in the back is gone, so presumably I can trust it's in the tank now.
Sounds like much of what I have paid for was for them doing what I did: Looking all around the car for an ad-blue tank hole and taking things apart trying to find it.
But none of that is the correct solution, which is to put it up on the ramp and clamber underneath to find the tank which has some sort of lowering mechanism, to then lower it and fill it and raise it again.
Not a job for me then. Next time it'll maybe be cheaper coz of them knowing what to do now and not spending half a day trying to figure it out.
Apparently there is a second emissions reduction mechanism which doesn't take a wattery bottle of urea, but instead needs a pouch of oily tar stuff.
This is more likely to empty and need replacing next, rather than the piss bottle.
And even for normal cars that haven't been screwed up for wheelchair access this is a mechanics job anyway. And the garage will have to order in the tar pouch especially.
Back in the 90s, my first car cost about 200 quid. Today I paid 200 quid to get someone to fill it up with purified piss for emissions reduction. Oh how things change. 😆
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2026-01-21 16:42:33
Apparently (I wasn’t part of the group, got the report when I arrived on the scene) there was a caravan of multiple vehicles following ICE. Several ICE vehicles cut dangerously into the caravan and forced the observers’ cars to stop. That’s when they smashed the person’s window and took them.
It sounds like multiple people got video. I hope you don’t see it, for the safety of those whose faces might appear in the video. But I hope you believe me anyway. This is all really happening.
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-19 23:31:34
Call your reps! https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-budget-ice-defund/
Demand that they block any DHS appropriations bill or Continuing Resolution (CR) that maintains funding for ICE.
This lawless and violent agency must be defunded and dissolved for good.
