While trying to fix my printer today, I discovered that a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018.
I’ve asked over a dozen Mac-using friends to confirm, and it was there for every one of them. The file is found in every version of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura), but isn’t in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier.
A peculiar find indeed, considering the utter uselessness and wastefulness that is cryptocurrency.
I think Cryptocurrency is the way forward and also it will be the currency that AGI will use to trade with other AGI systems.
@Thom
Cryptocurrency is used to wire-transfer money anonymously (just convert your cash into cryptocurrency anonymously using a “Bitcoin ATM”), allow druglords to store wealth out of sight of governments without having to keep cash around, and act as a store of wealth in countries like Venezuela where the local currency is experiencing hyperinflation for the past several years and holding bricks of gold is not always possible (due to the high crime rates). You might not like some of those uses, but it’s certainly not “useless”.
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Also, gotta love how “progressive” people got duped by libertarians into believing that cryptocurrency was supposedly a weapon against the big bad central banks (this was the years shortly after the GFC btw), and now the same “progressive” people are complaining about cryptocurrency and hate it with a passion. Well, this is what you get for believing in narratives instead of looking at the objective facts, dear “progressive” people.
BTW here is me getting downvoted on Arstechnica for saying Bitcoin should be banned back in 2016:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/posing-as-ransomware-windows-malware-just-deletes-victim%E2%80%99s-files.1322013/#post-31534591
And here is me taunting the same idiots some years later for the fact they got duped into cheering for Bitcoin and downvoting anyone who spoke against it:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/old-coal-plant-is-now-mining-bitcoin-for-a-utility-company.1479446/#post-40262008
kurkosdr,
It seems like you are reaching with this rant against “progressives”. While I do know some people who liked the idea of bitcoin to escape the purview of our financial institutions, they actually leaned conservative. Genuine question: do you have any data showing a correlation between cryptocurrency use and political leanings?
For the record, my personal view of crypto hasn’t really changed: I never liked it. Although my objections were more technical than political.
See how many downvotes my comment got on ArsTechnica aka Liberal Central.
Also, I had left-wing people back in university talk about Bitcoin as if it was a liberator against central banks.
The Ars Technica mob has been getting worse day by day.
YouTube videos on the topic get massively downvoted.
Comments with nothing but facts get massively downvoted.
Questions get downvoted.
It’s really something. Even Reddit has started to look substantially better.
This is what you get when you have a “downvote” functionality in a forum: A bunch of idiots with strong opinions who want to be mods (so they can impose their opinions on everyone else), but aren’t mods, cluster together to patrol the comments section and downvote any post that goes against their opinions, even if it’s nothing but facts.
Slashdot used to have a similar problem before reigning in who can downvote.
kurkosdr,
That’s anecdotal at best though. To be clear, I’m not saying there weren’t progressives involved in crypto hype, of course there were and it’s no surprise that you should cite those. But just as a point of order one could intentionally or unintentionally select samples to fit whatever outcome is desired to fit a preconceived narrative. You might have observed a real trend about crypto’s popularity, but molding it to fit a narrative against “progressives” seems very tenuous. Now I realize this is just a forum post and not a research topic, but still it sounds like there’s a lot of bias at play.
Well – this all depends on how one would define “progressives” and “liberals” – there is a very big difference between the literal meaning, the European understanding and the US perspective on these terms.
I would call myself progressive and liberal, as I an future oriented and hope humankind can evolve and also love freedom,
So that would be the literal meaning of thees words considering their Latin origin.
A digital currency might be a nice addition, but not as long as it is blockchain based. A blockchain is not compatible with the concept of freedom.
cybergorf,
Yeah, personally I don’t like using labels like these because people’s tribal instincts take over and it becomes hard to speak rationally about anything. When people become too focused on identity politics (ie “left wing liberals are idiots”) every discussion becomes a non-starter. Obviously it’s natural for people to disagree, but to combat divisiveness there needs to be a dialog beyond just judging people by their “labels” without any understanding of what they think or who they are.
Currency is a tough thing to solve fairly. The fiat currencies we have now including USD have resulted in an extremely abusive banking system. The more you learn about how US dollars are created (I’m not talking about physical paper so much as bank balances), the more it looks like smoke and mirrors. It wasn’t without problems, but I feel kind of partial to the gold standard where at the end of the day currency is backed with something of tangible value that is harder to manipulate.
Was yours the comment that essentially said that everybody there should read the whitepaper because they don’t actually understand bitcoin, because if they understood bitcoin they’d have the same opinion you do?
It was never supposed to be fair.
100% is pointless if you are a nihilist.
I am sure that Apple would like to have their own successful cryptocurrency for payment purposes. Unfortunately for companies like Apple they are rather bad at innovating and bringing the next big thing to the market. It’s now 16 years since iPhone was introduced. And Apple still lives in that era. Kids won’t have it.
What’s useful and fruitful?
I guess more than 80% of the waking time people are doing things which are ultimately useless and wasteful.
And don’t get me started on gambling and organized gambling which is also called “daily trading”.
I guess living in a 1st-world country with well thought-out government system and laws make you believe cryptos are “bad” and have skewed your world view. Welcome to oppressive regimes and countries with broken economies where either people are unable to transfer money or money costs nothing and you have nowhere to invest because otherwise you will end up broke with a literal ton of paper.
Thom is not living in a 1st world country any more, he moved to sweden a while back and Sweden is still part of the 3rd world as of now. It has applied to join the first world recently but is blocked by Turkey.
Worst trolling ever seen
It is not trolling. Sweden is and has been so far in the third world.
1st world=Nato and it’s allies and puppets
2nd world=China, Russia and it’s allies and puppets
3rd world=Everyone else
The richest countries in the world per capita is all in the 3rd world, Qatar, Switzerland, Bahrain, Singapore, Brunei and so on. So it is not about wealth nor productivity. The term originated from the cold war but is valid still today.
Counterpoint: No, they don’t. Not even close. Basically nothing people do is a waste of time.
A great counter-argument. Not.
Its interesting to me that its interesting to other people. Someone told me it was there. I’m not sure if I believed him, he was a bitcoin enthusiast I had to tolerate for a while. I didn’t know other people didn’t know it or would care about it. I also didn’t care enough to check, seeing as how I don’t have a mac and haven’t had one for years. People sneak in all kinds of odd Easter eggs into production operating systems and apps. I’m not immune to the impulse myself, but Id like to think I’ve matured beyond the point where I want to do it anymore as I see younger kids do it and shake my hand telling them to get off my lawn.
I don’t think cryptocurrency has lived up to its promise as yet, since it just seems to be a vehicle for speculation rather than currency for most.
That, and I’m greatly concerned about the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies like BTC. I’m really glad ETH has moved to proof of stake.