I am also worried about that.

There’s a limit to what you can do when the house and senate refuse to impeach a president who is obviously breaking the law constantly, and when the justice department sees itself as the president’s lawyer.

We can acknowledge that additional power granted to the executive branch of the US government cannot be said to be safe, and that limitations on its power must be more blunt in order to be reliable. Use of money that lacks buttons for them to cut people off is potentially one such blunt limitation. I also find the way people have been protesting pretty inspiring, I think it helps.

Why should it make your life worse? It could, but that shouldn’t be the assumption. The older I get the more I value any memories I can feel the same about now as I did back then, because most of it fades into nothing, only the most intense emotions have staying power. What you hate defines you just like what you love defines you, grudges are important for holding on to your humanity.

Of course it’s good to come to terms with things, and therapy helps, but I strongly object to the idea that the mature thing to do is entirely let go of old resentments and never share them, the opposite is true.

Therapy is no substitute for well earned grudges

I don’t think it uses npm though, that’s got to count for something

I called their support one time about an old Wacom tablet I have, they wouldn’t help, just kept trying to push me to buy a new one, so the comic is accurate.

Yes, and the failure of possible legal protections really illustrates the vulnerability I’m talking about here. This stuff took effect by default, had to be countered by a lawsuit, which hasn’t worked so far. It should be really clear why further moves away from cash and any semblance of financial privacy and autonomy are dangerous invitations to more abuse.

The sanctions on ICC judges are a very specific and well known example. I’m not writing a researched essay in the comments here though so I’m reluctant to dig into the details if that’s not something you’re going to do yourself. If you want more examples and a more in-depth take on this issue, here is an article on the subject that I broadly agree with.

I’ve already given several examples, all of which seem to qualify.

Yeah, it’s honestly a great book I really recommend reading it

If you’re arrested, you have various established rights, like being innocent until proven guilty, jury of your peers, need for the circumstances of your arrest to have been legal, need to charge you with a crime and let you see a lawyer to continue holding you, etc. Debanking, afaik, is more of just something government agencies do at their discretion. Sometimes it’s even done without any overt process at all, financial institutions are simply given vague warnings implying they should cut certain people or organizations off, and they proactively comply.

To give the example of civil forfeiture, there your money is assumed to be criminal until you prove in court that it is not, a reversal of the standard and infamously easy for corrupt cops to abuse.

Even better: The Anarchist Cookbook, nonviolent bait and switch edition:

From the cofounder of Food Not Bombs, an action-oriented guide to anarchism, social change, and vegan cooking

Unlike the original Anarchist Cookbook, which contained instructions for the manufacture of explosives, this version is both a cookbook in the literal sense and also a “cookbook” of recipes for social and political change.

In some ways it might be less serious, but that isn’t its only notable property. There’s also the way it bypasses many of the protections and assurances we have about the latter, like due process. The ability to silently, invisibly, and unilaterally shut down political adversaries etc. is dangerous, and there isn’t much reason to think it will be used only where there is legitimate justification (again, consider the sanctions against ICC judges for trying to hold war criminals accountable). It is entirely reasonable for people to want to preserve ways to defend themselves against this type of nonphysical state violence.

Does that mean you think there is no difference ethically? Have you thought about what corporations like Microsoft are going to do with the power they are accumulating here? Regardless, it’s worth considering that from the perspective of a programmer who is looking to incorporate AI into their work and learn to rely on it, there are risks with using these services that work against their interests, and that’s true independently of any ethical considerations.

I think they will stick with companies like USDC and just keep a leash on them. These stablecoins have freeze functions, the government can take charge of those if they want, and it’s potentially a major source of demand for US treasuries in an environment where US debt keeps looking like a worse bet to everyone, since the legislation mandates full reserves and specifies what those reserves can be denominated in.

Not that any of this is especially a good thing imo. The value of crypto is permissionless money, stablecoins are not that and have centralized controls, at least the popular ones the law approves of.

Don’t they fill the same role? What would the practical differences be? They compete for basically the same market anyway, so it’s worth thinking about what system is likely to become the standard.

You’re good, I’m mostly just pointing this out in case it’s something people reading comments who didn’t have time to read the article would want to know. Although now I’m seeing that this is also in the title, but oh well, not like I read it the first time

Ok, I’m not trying to defend it, call it what you want. The point is that debanking is serious and a real threat.

If you’re not using local models these companies have got you by the balls

titles that use “Generative AI” for art, audio, music, text, or dialog.

The wording seems to imply that using it for coding is not prohibited, just using it for media assets displayed to the player.

Transitioning to CBDCs would just be making the back-end more robust

What exactly “transition to CBDCs” means is kind of ambiguous, but the way it’s looking is that what we’re going to get is licensing of privately issued stablecoins, which then increasingly get used behind the scenes in payments infrastructure. They passed a regulatory framework for this last year in the US and things have been progressing since then.