where did they mention Bitcoin? much like everything "first generation", Bitcoin is objectively garbage nowadays, when we have continuously evolving Ethereum for modern all-around-good experience and Monero for actually private payments. oh by the way, cryptographically significant quantum processors are eventually coming, and Bitcoin still didn't make up its mind on PQC, to my knowledge, whereas Ethereum did.
no one writes a fresh C99 project in a 2000s Visual Studio with whatever formatting was the most trendy back then anymore.
crypto has a lot of theoretical value, but in practice people only really think of crypto when they want to tap into shadow economy.
I do not deny that this technology will be instrumental to network communities, provided we are ever allowed to form such. I do not deny that offline POSes and fully offline tap-to-pay may become a possibility if an existing fiat currency adopts crypto as one "interface" among traditional banking, Apple/Google Pay, and cash. (this, by the way, would be incredible in Ukraine - right now it's power off, and you can't use your bank for offline purchases.)
in practice it's only really shadow economy. at this point it's not even a speculative asset of some notable value
yeah but the shadow economy is important. even if you dont support drug legalization, its good to have a backup path in case the government decides to do something like close the bank accounts of Palestine protesters or ban tools that let you flash your cars firmware. always remember one mans terrorist is another mans rebel.
western governments are moving into more mass surveillance, more copyright (except for AI companies) and closed off platforms, more attempts to control what we do online but also in the outside world. all in the name of safety and security but for some reason all of it benefits corrupt billionaires and power mad cops. anonymous payments are one thing that can help us fight back.
> To be fair this is a fairly low risk, but it's _a_ risk.
it's much higher than you think, at least during Trump admin. have you seen how LLM agents are being shoved down our throats at tech companies? the government is no better in that regard, there are all incentives to skip output verification
a year or two ago, I'd enjoy this comment as some usual HN satire. nowadays, especially here, I do see a lot of people that actually believe this, enough to make me think whether to laugh
> The question is, how do we prevent China and India from just taking our research and copying it for free
centralize all chemistry research behind the closed doors, weapon-level export controls on U.S.-made fever drugs simply because they are U.S.-made, severely control international collaboration, and so much more.
the problem is that the scientific community will rightfully revolt and the rest of the world will pull ahead of the U.S. in a relatively short amount of time. plus, since open science will have been long dead in the U.S. under such conditions, random breakthroughs at a basement or a non-prestigious university will cease to exist as a concept.
China and India piggybacking is the least bad thing to happen. rather, it's an indicator of how open the open science in the U.S. is
> China and India piggybacking is the least bad thing to happen.
So... the US and European tax- and insurance payers are supposed to pay the billions of dollars for R&D and amortization, just for China to copy everything?
It's bad enough if China does that for their internal market. But they don't stop there, their clones and fakes flood back into our markets as well, leading to regular warnings such as [1] from government authorities for consumer safety.
This is unsustainable on so many levels, it needs to stop.
US and European payers aren't paying for neither R&D nor amortization. They're paying a negotiated price that depends mostly on how much value the drug provides to the patient and the health system. The costs for the producers aren't really a factor.
> US and European payers aren't paying for neither R&D nor amortization.
Of course we do. A lot of the foundational research happens at universities, funded with taxpayer money in the form of research grants.
> They're paying a negotiated price that depends mostly on how much value the drug provides to the patient and the health system.
Only partially. The pharma companies roughly know how much it cost them to get the compound past all the trial stages and how many compounds failed along the path. The usual method is that the rich nations pay for R&D amortization and poor countries pay at-cost for manufacture.
Yeah, but usually, we pay for stuff with taxes and we benefit.
I wouldn't have much of a problem if China and India would just steal our stuff to benefit their own population - given the widespread poverty there, that's development aid.
But where I draw the line is when China and India undermine our own markets with copycats.
and Europe. Europe should also decouple itself from the U.S. as much as it is possible, and not repeat the mistake of overreliance with China. not because China is somehow worse, but because you always should be able to say "no", no matter how good your partners are
Unfortunately decoupling payments within the EU is insufficient if the US can just threaten to sanction your bank, and in doing so force the bank to drop you as a customer. Even in the presence of an internal European payments network, those banks still need to transact with the US and other US-sphere countries...
No but then you can have local bank that will not have US interactions but can still serve you. Since the French judge of the IPC was sanctioned, it’s clear that the EU must completely decouple from the US.
> The payment system has to be decoupled first, and then banks can have nothing to fear from US sanctions.
I'm not sure the payment system is most banks primary concern. Being able to buy/sell US securities turns out to be a fairly fundamental part of the modern economy
For now, but not forever. Skate to where the puck is going to be. Decoupling continues, with the target being independence. Quote this comment five years from now.
I consider myself a high-quality junior, rivaling my senior industry peers on flexibility, systems thinking, low-level engineering, and understanding of user experience. yet all I found this year was a place I got fired from 2 weeks after getting hired. the reason? I called Claude Code "a decent search engine" on a meeting. perhaps I would have been fired anyway because the heatwave was building in Ukraine and I had absolutely nothing but a basement (where I can't move my desktop to) to cool off.
If you’re ever gonna get fired for a single comment, it would be at 2 weeks. I have seen people get fired that early on for a single poor-taste comment to the wrong person. It’s wild, but at 2 weeks you’re completely expendable.
this was literally the reason pointed out in chat. devs liked how I worked, had zero questions on review, and that's despite me seeing their tech stack second time in my entire life
Some percentage of engineering is actually people and politics. The more power (or alternative options) you have, the more you can speak your mind. But if you need the job then argue your case just to the boss, discreetly.
no one writes a fresh C99 project in a 2000s Visual Studio with whatever formatting was the most trendy back then anymore.
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