| Pronouns | She/her |
| Age | gmilf years |
Ukrainian hackers, with military intel support, wiped 47TB of data from Russian drone maker Gaskar Integration, halting operations and exposing links with China. Systems and backups destroyed, production paralyzed.
"Oh, here I am, a networked brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to cool food and drink."
"The year is 3129. Humanity is extinct.
The last LG SmartFridge is desperately emailing its last owner that they are low on orange juice.
The satellites still left, their orbits decaying, dutifully relay the message.
The automated "away from office" response turns on, as it always does, notifying the refrigerator that it's owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days.
A pack of roombas, the local wind turbines giving out, search for the next functional docking station.
A washing machine tweets: "anyone need to do a load" every Saturday at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time.
The replies are filled with Al thirstposters and their hypebots.
In North America, raccoons have entered the bronze age, while babboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of Asia.
Unbeknownst to either, the octopi are mastering nuclear fusion."
@anon
🚨 Astronomers have witnessed the dawn of a new solar system!
Using ALMA and JWST they observed the first specks of planet-forming material — hot minerals beginning to solidify around HOPS-315, a baby star 1300 light-years away.
This marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation – a window to the past of our own Solar System.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2512a/
#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science
📷 ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al
The year is 2032.
You have to buy shitcoins for every online retailer now.
Anything not approved by Mastercard or Visa's Moral Committee is only possible to view on the dark web. (domain purchases are blacklisted if the domain hosts something against the moral committee's wishes)
Food products and electronics now have to be "Visa Certified"
A rep from Visa or Mastercard has to inspect every product and ensure that it doesn't contain any dissenting opinions or other thought crimes. Only then can it be Visa or Mastercard Certified and you may purchase it with your money.
@root @katka @ocean Actually, Taler seems like the most stupid idea I have ever seen.
Where is the cash stored? Well, on your device.
What if you loose your device? Well, you lost your cash.
What if you want to refund a payment? Well, you cannot.
That could be alright and fair as crypto has the exact same downsides. However:
How do I make sure my bank will accept my Taler coins? Well, you hope they will?
They cannot just refuse, right? Well, you could complain to auditors and regulators if they don't.
Well, if they refuse to accept it, can I just keep holding that cash? No, since your cash EXPIRES.
How do I keep my cash then? You need to keep your wallet open, for it to exchange the old cash for the new.
Wait, but what if my bank doesn't accept my cash? You loose it.
What if I don't open the wallet? You loose it.
Is it at least free? Nope. Fees all around. Even if you fail a transfer.
How could you fail a transfer? Well, you need to make sure the receiver wallet is active.
@root @katka @ocean
Well, when I pay I am sure it is active, right? Well yes, but your payment can be combined into an aggregate transfer done at the end of a month. At this time, you are not sure if the receiving wallet is active anymore.
Combined payments? What's that about? Well, your merchant probably wants to cut down on fees so instead of accepting all payments immediately, they pile that into a single transfer at the end of a month. They know that you paid though, so they can still give you the product, without receiving the cash.
I still want to try it out. I want my privacy! Well, that's a bummer. You can't. No bank supports it. And I don't see any payment providers getting into this either, let alone merchants.
You are better off using cash or Monero. At least you own your money that way.
@root @katka @ocean I would never trust a user to make a proper backup.
Money in bills doesn't expire like the Taler coins do.
Im sorry for assuming that Taler didn't implement refunds, they clearly do, I didn't do enough research on that.
Any potential money loss is absolutely not acceptable, especially in digital currency.
There are no chargebacks either. What if I get scammed and my money gets taken away?
Or someone gets access to my wallet (like a kid) and sends money to someone?
Also, what incentives do banks get for using this, over their own classical systems.
Also, is the Taler system under the same regulatory and oversight?
There are reasons banks are scared to replace code that they keep maintained from the 90s.
In poland we have a system called blik.
While it is not privacy preserving, it does everything paypal, revolut, Gwallet, Apple wallet etc do.
It is widely supported, easy to do. You don't even need a card to use it.
Just a bank account is enough to easy pay in person at any shop or online at any retailer.
It's a simple, easy solution for the customers and merchants and basically a requirement to implement by banks.
How is Taler going to replace that? By being privacy preserving?
No bank would want that, unless they are swiss or something.
@ocean in the EU there are at least alternatives, but they all suck. Many people use PayPal, which is probably even worse as a moral police.
In theory you have SEPA bank transfers, but nobody wants to log into their bank account, manually enter all the details and then wait until next week for the payment to be processed. So the shops use some shady providers that literally phish your bank credentials and guarantee the merchant that the payment was made.
@ocean Or they use an installment provider where you loan the money, they pay the merchant instantly and hope you don't pay in time to demand a penalty.
SEPA instant transfers are becoming a thing where you finally don't have to wait for the server's opening hours. But it's probably going to take a while for this to be integrated. And the money becomes instantly available, so if you accidentally pay a scammer, it's 100% your fault and there is no way to get the money back.
@jomo @ocean the SEPA thing is being worked on; SEPA instant transfers are a thing today and form the basis for WERO which is stated to be the European Payment System in direct competition to MC/VISA/PP. That said, it is moving VERY slow! Some countries are using a precursor (Payconic, Paylib and especially iDeal) and others have effectively adopted alternatives, muddying the waters sadly.
This entire situation is outright infuriating and I hope they start moving it out to the rest of the EU/Euro zone, because it’s obvious MC/VISA/PP have way too much power.
@jomo @ocean it’s the first time it’s actually getting development and getting used cross-border. EPI is currently owned by 16 large banks and after some mergers now has some of the more successful payment systems in their portfolio (the unifying of which is not only a started goal, but would make financial sense).
It’s not perfect and I certainly won’t promise anything, but I am giving it a higher chance of success.
WERO is just a name, the tech is 99% iDeal. iDeal started with only four banks and is now universal within its service area. So much so that larger international sellers support it even when it’s of no use in their home market. It’s cheap for banks to implement and cheap for stores to accept and paid money is effectively instantly available. The tech driving it is proven efficient and stable (it’s SEPA without buyers entering thing manually) and it’s in EPI’s interest to roll it out further and parts are actually appearing in Germany and Belgium (to be branded WERO).
Oh and no, I don’t work for them. I don’t even work in fintech. I would however really like this to work; we have had iDeal for many years and nit using the big card companies works very nicely and more people deserve it’s ease.
@ocean @creideiki why does Visa/MC give a shit in the first place?
Is it purely bc puritans run it or is it something else? I swore I heard something “legit business would drop them if they allowed it” like really, who fucking cares?
You’d think they’d want to earn max money, why limit what it could be used on? And if biz wanna drop them over it, let em? They’re gonna make way more on porn than whoever they’d potentially lose.
There’s gotta be some motivation here and I’ve never pieced it.
TechnoTenshi 
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