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Telegram, the FSB, and the Man in the Middle: The technical infrastructure that underpins Telegram is controlled by a man whose companies have collaborated with Russian intelligence services.

Technology
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    S
    What do they do with Monero? buy other things with it exchange for cash through the black market This exact same thing happens w/ a lot of other things, such as: US dollar (or perhaps Euro) transactions in countries that manipulate their currency drug smuggling - the drug dealer "launders" the money to whatever currency they want Basically, the same thing that works for illicit transactions protects activists, political dissidents, etc in authoritarian regions. All privacy coins provide is a convenient digital medium of exchange, how that gets turned into another medium of exchange is up to the merchant. For things like utilities, authoritarian regimes tend to be pretty corrupt, and they already do under-the-table transactions. Using Monera vs drugs, foreign currency, etc isn't going to change that. I wouldn’t be surprised if your transactions would be less private with monero than a bank payment (because of Monero’s unlicensed nature). How so? Monero explicitly hides transaction details, so even if a large actor like the Russian, Chinese, or US government wanted, they can't track transactions, even if they compromise one end of the transaction. The wallet ID you use when buying something is ephemeral, the protocol creates a ton of misleading transactions so tracking down the correct one is very difficult, and even if they did, they'd have to break the crypto to link two transactions from the same wallet. Transactions are also very inexpensive, generally costing under a penny, so even if you wallet gets compromised, you can inexpensively move it to a new wallet. The only way Monero would be less private than a bank is if government regulations make it so and under-the-table transactions are blocked effectively. But that would require a heavy surveillance state, and the heavier the surveillance state is, the more attractive under-the-table transactions become. Privacy coins get pushback from governments because they're effective at protecting privacy. It turns out, governments like spying on transactions, and would get rid of cash if they could get away with it. They get used a lot for illicit transactions because they're effective at it, and that's why governments have started to restrict their use (i.e. banning Monero from exchanges). I'm not a crypto fan boy by any stretch, and I don't think anyone should "invest" in them because they don't generate any form of value (I feel the same about precious metals). But I do think privacy coins have a place in society as a digital cash replacement, because I'd really rather not have my transaction details spied on by governments. If you want practical reasons for this, look no further than the Mastercard/Visa scandal w/ porn gaes on Steam and other platforms.
  • Rising rocket launches linked to ozone layer thinning

    Technology technology
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    Z
    They cry antisemitism, then the Seven Mountain Mandate people cry antisemitism, yadda yadda yadda...
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    D
    They are examples of complex and difficult tasks that humans are capable of when working together, implying through comparison reordering society is also achievable.
  • Authors petition publishers to curtail their use of AI

    Technology technology
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    M
    I’m sure publishers are all ears /s
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    toastedravioli@midwest.socialT
    ChatGPT is not a doctor. But models trained on imaging can actually be a very useful tool for them to utilize. Even years ago, just before the AI “boom”, they were asking doctors for details on how they examine patient images and then training models on that. They found that the AI was “better” than doctors specifically because it followed the doctor’s advice 100% of the time; thereby eliminating any kind of bias from the doctor that might interfere with following their own training. Of course, the splashy headline “AI better than doctors” was ridiculous. But it does show the benefit of having a neutral tool for doctors to utilize, especially when looking at images for people who are outside of the typical demographics that much medical training is based on. (As in mostly just white men. For example, everything they train doctors on regarding knee imagining comes from images of the knees of coal miners in the UK some decades ago)
  • We caught 4 states sharing personal health data with Big Tech

    Technology technology
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    M
    Can these types of post include countries in the title? This USA defaultism makes the experience worse for everyone else with no benefit whatsoever
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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    D
    "Extra Verification steps" I know how large social media companies operate. This is all about increasing the value of Reddit users to advertisers. The goal is to have a more accurate user database to sell them. Zuckerberg literally brags to corporations about how good their data is on users: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/performance-marketing Here, Zuckerberg tells corporations that Instagram can easily manipulate users into purchasing shit: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/instagram-reels Always be wary of anything available for free. There are some quality exceptions (CBC, VLC, The Guardian, Linux, PBS, Wikipedia, Lemmy, ProPublica) but, by and large, "free" means they don't care about you. You are just a commodity that they sell. Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, Instagram... Their goal is keep people hooked to their smartphone by giving them regular small dopamine hits (likes, upvotes) followed by a small breaks with outrageous content/emotional content. Keep them hooked, gather their data, and sell them ads. The people who know that best are former top executives : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/addictive-technology.html https://www.today.com/parents/teens/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-rcna15256