Unlikely the case, Telegram is the app that Russian government is most focused on blocking right now, it's almost impossible to use without proxy or VPN.
Not saying Durov is perfect but video you linked is about guy who has all his assets in Russia while Durov has none.
The man looks on photos like he genuinely loves his long-term girlfriend and the three kids he has with her. Kids are stupid tho. They climb on everything and fall out of windows frequently.
Durov is about as anti-Putin and russia in general as one can get. He go fucked hard in russia and has been going extremely hard against the censorship in russia. TG is one of the few chat apps that can avoid russia's suppression measures, when everything else working over internet fails.
Durov has been going hard against censorship because the pressure on Russians to switch to MAX might consign his own app to oblivion. But to call Durov “anti-Russia” when Telegram development and servers remained in Russia, is to ascribe to him a dissident status that he doesn’t actually deserve.
(Durov himself is known to regularly visit Russia, while denying he ever visits Russia. Telegram opened a Dubai office claiming that it was now a Dubai-headquartered company, but that was a mere legal formality; no one was actually there at that office, and journalists visiting it found that not even the building staff knew anything about Telegram. In practice, the company continues to exist out of Russia.)
Do you have a source for any of this? Wikipedia and news that I can find support that he fled Russia after government conflicts. It’s also well known that he keeps his and the dev team’s location secret, so anybody going knocking on incorporation addresses in Dubai then feigning surprise is acting in bad faith.
This was all over the news a couple of years ago when Russian entry/exit records were leaked. Doing a Google search for “durov visited russia frequently” will get you plenty of reportage.
"so anybody going knocking on incorporation addresses in Dubai" The point is that Telegram has repeatedly countered claims that it is a Russian app with "Actually, Telegram is a Dubai company”. People reasonably interpret that as more than a mere incorporation address, and it isn’t being emphasized enough that development is still largely done from Russia, and servers are also located there.
Half of Russian military uses it in the field. I do not care what story that guy is spreading around about his affiliations or lack of with Russia. Zero trust. Never touching Telegram.
It's a personality type / disorder (pick your poison). There's no hope for change. Programming seems to attract such people, because they are fixated on being right and proving that they are right. I know a few more examples. My common sense policy is - if the software these types produce works for me, I will be using it, but I will never allow myself to be dependent on it. That kind of person will gladly burn their own house to the ground, with everyone in it, if that's what's required to prove their truths or maintain some kind of intellectual purity.
One common personality disorder I see a lot is psychologizing your interlocutors to invalidate them, thus insulating you from having to think you're wrong about something
One common personality disorder I see is being extremely defensive when encountering any discussion of human psychology. This comes from a deep psychological fragility.
Ok, but what I'd be wrong about here? I'm not even claiming that the person in the article is that way. I don't know enough about them. I have noticed a certain trend, however, and that's what I was noting.
People used to be able to smoke in pubs. But I agree it wasn't quite so culturally foundational.
I'm not going to lose sleep over the idea of a smoking ban, since it was already driven to the margins, but the implementation of it by age is really weird. Clearly a move to avoid annoying pensioners, like everything else.
It makes sense to me, we're talking about a highly addictive psychoactive substance. It's much harder to get out of addiction than not get addicted in the first place, and people born after 2008 did not have a legal way to get addicted yet. That's exactly how I'd approach having a transition period to not cause unnecessary suffering in the process.
But nevermind culturally foundational, if you take away drinking at pubs then they're not pubs, it's immediately more of an impact, and more of an effect on local economies, small businesses, etc. too.
I disagree that age-based is weird: these are people who can't (yet) already do it, so they're not having something (current) taken away from them. It's a lot harder and crueller to say you're taking away something someone likes/does, even if they're not fully addicted to it.
That was not my argument at all. First I said, I don't see bitcoin as currency at all. Second, major nation states have always tryed to use their power to force other nations to use their currency (petrodollar, cough). This is nothing specific to crypto, but something also specific to traditional fiat currencies.
Any high-volatile asset such as bitcoin is IMHO not suited as currency. The good news is, with the bitcoin taproot upgrade and latest lightning standards, you can actually issue stablecoins over bitcoin's taproot asset protocol, and send it over the existing lightning network. My bet is on stablecoins-over-lightning as currency, and bitcoin as store of value. One blockchain to rule them all, other chains not need (for financial transactions at least).
No, Layer-2 systems only transfer cryptographically signed IOUs between nodes.
Settlement only happens when these IOUs are cashed out, and to cash out you need a transaction in the blockchain layer, so the point about latency still stands.
It is as much an IOU as the US Dollar was pre-1971. That is a pretty good image for Lightning/Bitcoins relationship. Lightning is the dollar with a guarantee that you can convert it to gold anytime you like by presenting it at the central bank. Very few people ever converted their USD to the underlying gold as a settlement transaction. The difference with lightning is, the government can't just rug-pull you and stop exchanging those paper bill IOUs - it is cryptograhpically secured that you can always convert to bitcoin. Since no one would consider exchaging dollars as settling in gold, lightning settlement is not tied to on-chain transactions.
Payment channels are possible on other networks as well. Once again, there is no inherent advantage to Bitcoin here. I know because I worked on one (https://raiden.network/). I also dealt with many of its failure modes:
- insufficient liquidity on intemediate nodes
- network partitions
- uncooperative nodes
- nodes that were liquidity sinks and forced other participants to bear the costs of deposits
- insufficient market makers
But more than anything: people do not want to use crypto for payments. It gives them no significant advantage over traditional credit/debit cards, it has no built-in solution for appeals or reversals and it forces them to learn a bunch of stuff to be minimally safe...
> Payment channels are possible on other networks as well
you are moving the goalpost in the discussion of this thread. User KaierPro said bitcoin would not be suitable because transactions takes to long, to which is responded lightning solves that. Now claiming that other cryptos can have layers-2 is correct, but adds nothing to the discussion or my initial point. Yes other chains have faster settlement times, and can have their respective payment channels - no one argued against that.
In practice, it has shown that it is only viable if adoption by number of nodes and TVL grew by orders of magnitude, and both are very unlikely to happen because - like I said - spenders have nothing to gain from it and no matter how much of the UX friction is solved, it will never be as easy as paying with credit card.
The only people who want to use Lightning are the ones who are invested in Bitcoin. Everyone else just want simple/safe access to a payment network.
You are just moving the goalpost again, without adding to the discussion. If spenders have nothing to gain because they prefer creditcards, then this argument applies to bitcoin/lightning, monero and all other cryptos all the same. Nothing to do with my initial point which was comparing lightning/bitcoin to monero.
> If spenders have nothing to gain because they prefer creditcards, then this argument applies to bitcoin/lightning, monero and all other cryptos all the same.
Most spenders will prefer credit cards, but there is a non-zero group where absolute privacy is important and monero is the better choice, therefore more valuable to them.
You are the one trying to make some false equivalency by saying that "bitcoin/lightning is good enough for most cases, therefore there is no need for monero".
The problem is that you are starting with the conclusion that you want (i.e, "Bitcoin is the best") and you are working backwards from this conclusion to make all sorts of rationalizations. Try going from the use case first and then let's see where the reasoning takes you. You will see that for pretty much ANY use-case, Bitcoin is not the answer.
It is splitting words. There is a settlement layer in lightning, which is presenting the preimage and unpeeling the onion HLTCs in reverse order. This happens at the latency of the network path, so usually less than a second. Bitcoin settling is usually tied to confirmation in the block, which lasts ~10minutes. Lightning might be IOUs, but ones that are fungible themselves and not tied to a specific debtor. Actual lightning-to-bitcoin cashout would probably not happen for everyday use, or at least not more often than you change bankaccounts in todays terms.
That's intellectually dishonest. It's like saying wire transfers or card payments are only valid after interbank settlements are finalized.
Bitcoin Lightning is cryptographically designed to be valid even if it's not yet settled on the main layer. It provides cryptographically sound mechanisms to overrule anyone that tries to "cheat". There is no mathematical way to cancel or double spend it, just like your dollars are valid when the transaction is committed in your bank's database although the money still technically hasn't left the other bank.
There are plenty of failure modes where you can lose your funds even if your wallet keys are not compromised. Try running a lightning node, make transactions worth more than a few hundred dollars and then leave your node offline for a few days. Or even more simply: ask yourself what happens to your funds if the disk on your lightning node goes bust and you don't have a recent backup.
THis is the issue, until its settled in the chain, then you are down to trusting the 2nd layer.
Anything offchain has a whole bunch of issues that are either naively or deliberately obscured by the fact that it _eventually_ writes to the blockchain. The exchanges that offer instant settlement are circumventing trust by doing the settlement for you. You get speed, but not security that they have done what they have said they have.
Well, to be fair to OP: small business and retailers are also not getting "real" money when they accept payment via credit cards from Visa/MasterCard.
To be honest I think the issue here is not due to speed of settlement, but layer-2 is not an acceptable substitute because it does not allow reversability. For the merchants it's good that they are getting the money right away, but most consumers will not dare to pay anything via layer-2 networks simply because they won't have any recourse in case they want to undo the transaction.
You can implement reverseability with a credit system, such as Visa/Mastercard. It should not be implemented in base layer or layer-2. It is basically an escrow system.
So now you are proposing to build yet-another piece to an already complex system just so we can justify the existence of your beloved blockchain in the first place.
How long it's going to take you to realize that even if we built everything you are asking for, we are STILL going to end up with a system that is not as capital-efficient as the status quo?
This is just untrue.
If someone cheats in lightning, and you demonstrate they cheated as you describe, then you get all of the locked BTC as a reward. This is on layer 1. Essentially you can easily prove your nonce was signed more recently.
> People who are "passionate" about sports have always been the most aggressive and vulgar.
Sure but I can't help but wonder if many of them have money riding on the games which makes their anger much more understandable. Perhaps those you grew up around were also having a bit of a flutter.
Oh, for sure, I don't doubt that at all! My only point is causality. I do not agree that it's betting companies fault (whether they are on-chain or not). If there weren't ways to bet, these people would invent them.
Agreed. I just personally think advertising gambling should be illegal. Obviously there's so much vested money that its hard to shift given that it props up a lot of sports revenue today. However we learned the horrors of tobacco advertising and I can't see why we shouldn't learn the same lessons about gambling. It can never be illegal because the black market would be worse, but we shouldn't encourage it.
> I'm trying to learn music production with a DAW, sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time. Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).
If you enjoy the process and its outcomes, then it's not a waste of time. If you are forcing yourself to do it or have another motivation for it that is not rooted in genuine interest, then yes, you are wasting your time.
> I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent
This is a spiritual question, so you will have as many answers as there are askers. I found my answer and am happy to share it with you. Why do it? Because I want to. What is worth doing? What I want to do or what gets me to the things I want. Wanting is a very important process, that is often damaged by conditioning. We are told that some things we want are bad and that some things we don't want are good. Or that ego is evil. So many ways this process can go wrong. I think fixing this in oneself is part of becoming an actual adult. Once you know what you want and what you don't want, you no longer are dependent on others telling you what to do or forcing you to do things you shouldn't be doing. Ego is not evil, it's there for a reason. Some people have an overgrown one while others have an underdeveloped one. What is needed is balance. I don't think the pattern recognition machine has anything to do with it. I suspect, that a lot of people who use music as a band aid for personal problems, i.e. people who build their identity around being special due to music making, are the ones who are afraid of AI, but if you just enjoy making music, then what does it matter if music itself is patterned and if a machine can exploit that? It doesn't take anything away from the joy of making music, if you experience it in the first place.
I need to force myself to do almost everything. Simply saying it's a waste of time because of that isn't practical unless I give up on life entirely.
In practice, it's not binary. I'm interested because I want to make music similar to that which I like listening to.
Sometimes I get enjoyment out of it, but sometimes I lose interest maybe because I'm facing a frustration.
My question of wasting time is connected to "can I even create something worth listening to". If nothing I could make is worth listening to, then I guess I would feel the process of creation is pointless.
I've heard others write about how what they produce is worth listening to, to them. I think that is enough, but I also think I lack confidence in my own judgement. Almost like I need someone else to confirm my validity. I have recognized that as a result of emotional neglect, but I haven't figured out how to fix it.
I understand how you feel, because I have been there.
Worthiness is an illusion created by the mind. In reality, there is no worthiness. "can I even create something worth listening to" is an absurd question. You either like what you are hearing or you don't.
Sounds like you are not in a good place right now. The only thing I can say, that I hope won't sound patronizing, is that it is just a stage in the process of life. When I felt that way, it was both terrifying (why do I feel that way) and not terrifying (I don't feel anything). Some call it depression. Maybe they are right. For me, it's the quiet before the storm - the old has to die for the new to be born. I can now see, that the reason for that was the life I lived up to that point was not the life I wanted to live. I wasn't authentic to myself. I was weighed down by coping mechanisms, misguided beliefs, fear, and trauma. There was so much I had to reject and heal. Took me a few years, but now life has a new taste to it.
You said you are facing frustration. Good. Face it. Whatever it is that you feel, don't try to run from it or cover it with something else. The only way is through. Good luck
I refuse to see Stripe as anything other than inconvenience. They refuse all my payments, because they don't like my debit card provider. When a service uses Stripe for payments, I just assume they don't want me as a client.
The provider is Wise - an "e-money" institution. I've been using them for well over a decade. They are very good. Never had any issues until recently - a service I was interested in uses Stripe to "verify" the card before charging. Stripe rejected all Wise cards - physical and digital. I had to use my legacy bank's debit card. Problem is, the legacy bank charges outrageous forex fees and has an awful spread on top of it, so if I can't use Wise card after "verification", I will have to give up on the service. I asked them what could be done and they just said they use Stripe and that's it.
I can't do it. If I let an LLM write code for me, that code is untouchable. I see it as a black box, that I will categorically refuse to open. If it works, I use it, but don't trust it. If it breaks, I get frustrated. The only way that works for me is me behind the driving wheel at all times and an LLM as an assistant that answers my questions. We either brainstorm something or it helps me express things I know in languages syntax. Somehow that step has always been a bit of a burden for me - I understood the concepts well, but expressing them in syntax was a bit of a difficulty.
"Yes they crashed into a wall and all died, whereas you steered around it, but you must acknowledge that they crashed twice as quickly as you didn't crash. If you were driving their car, you would have just slowed them down."
People should have read to the end of "Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes"[1]:
The resulting compiler has nearly reached the limits of Opus [4.6]’s abilities. I tried (hard!) to fix several of the above limitations but wasn’t fully successful. New features and bugfixes frequently broke existing functionality.
"tried (hard!)" is very ominous. I wonder how Mythos would fare. Presumably it would get further, maybe much further. But I strongly doubt the "frequently broke existing functionality" problem was solved. Eventually humans have to understand the most difficult parts of the code. Good luck with that!
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