Cory DoctorowFeb 28

One thing we know about the mass tech layoffs attributed to "AI" is that they follow a trend of mass tech layoffs that firms were formerly forced to admit were the result of their businesses contracting sharply after the lockdowns ended, when users didn't need nearly so many cloud services. By blaming the continuing layoffs on "AI," companies whose business continues to contract can tell investors that they are on the bleeding edge, not the contracting tail.

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Show threadCory DoctorowFeb 28

In related news: yesterday, Block announced it was firing half its engineers to make a "big bet on AI."

Block used to be called "Square" and it had a very successful business as a payment processor. It changed its name to Block when it went all in on crypto.

Block's mass "AI" layoffs coincide with a *50%* drop in Bitcoin, with concomitant collapses in other cryptos. Crypto market watchers warn that the industry is so overleveraged that this could lead to total collapse.

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Show threadRobert BanzFeb 28
@pluralistic Ah, Crypto and AI. Smells like a solid long term plan!
Show threadTor Iver WilhelmsenFeb 28
@target @pluralistic Yeah, crypto «code is law» is already full of bugs and exploits, imagine the future of vibe-coded rules.
Show threadkNeo gHauFeb 28
@toriver @target @pluralistic what bugs and exploits do Bitcoin or Ethereum have? I've never heard of those blockchains being hacked or taken offline, just 3rd party exchanges being exploited.
Show threadChidozie Nwobilor (he/him)Feb 28

@kneoghau @toriver @target @pluralistic blockchains have built in weaknesses compared to the financial systems they plan to supplant. For example, if someone steals your mastercard and buys a bunch of stuff, you can get those transactions undone, but on blockchain those transactions are permanent barring you convince the *whole* community to fork the chain.

That inflexibility extends to any of the smart contracts implemented on Ethereum. In Dan Olsen's Line Goes Up ( https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?si=Bq-g1I6PjqskySZC) he mentions a game released that released with several bugs that couldn't be fixed without forking and it went very badly for them.

Worse the smart contracts execute regardless of what the wallet owner wants ; the nft/crypto world has rediscovered the security bugs that plagued the early 2000s

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

YouTube
Show threadkNeo gHau
@dagclo @toriver @target @pluralistic And a weakness of fiat currency is it can be rolled back. If a government entity (either your own gov, or America) doesn't like who you've (legally) sent money too they can block it, reverse it, or just steal it. Wikileaks was a prime example, adult games on steam, and even more recently Francesca Albanese. Most people don't consider this a bug or exploit in fiat currency.
Mar 1 at 1:54pmMastodon for Android
Show threadChidozie Nwobilor (he/him)Mar 2
@kneoghau @toriver @target @pluralistic The ability to roll back isn't a feature of fiat currency; it's a feature of how modern banking works. Your bank balance isn't a count of all the pennies the bank has in a vault somewhere; it's the net sum of all the transactions in and out of your account. When a bank wants to roll back a transaction, it either adds a reverse transaction or (if they haven't sent it off to be reconciled by the rest of the banks) deletes it. That isn't a feature of fiat currency (you can't do this with a dollar bill for example) and it's not something that cryptocurrency can prevent.
That's because one of the biggest weaknesses of our modern banking system is how much it incentivizes rent-seeking. Right now Fidelity sells cryptocurrency indexes which don't track who owns each individual bitcoin ( or ether, dogecoin , or what-have-you) but the owners of the buy/sell transactions. Fidelity does that for convenience because it and its customers want fast predictable transactions and fees