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Oculus founder Palmer Luckey leads group of tech billionaires launching new crypto-bank — aims to fill the void left by Silicon Valley Bank's 2023 collapse

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    It's hilarious in a way that Thiel, one of the billionaires who triggered a liquidity crisis that sunk SVB, is off proposing to fill the gap that he created. It's also entirely fitting with the conspiracy theory of the tech bro fascists wanting complete autonomy to setup electronic fiefdoms.

    I don't really get how this would work though, in more practical terms -- as a lot of the crypto stuff is just antithetical to the banking industry. Like even the whole schpiel the crypto bros often go on about how you can send money quick from wallet to wallet, with the old "OMG we did it! How can banks be so stupid and slow!". It's largely due to regulation. Like anti-money laundering regulation, where countries don't want citizens funding things like foreign terrorist groups with untrackable/unblockable wallet to wallet money transfers, so they tell banks they gotta scrutinize every transaction quite a bit, under threat of hefty fines -- and where the govt can overtly tell banks to block payments to unfriendly countries (eg. Iran).

    Meh, it's clear they won't care about the fundamentals at all, nor do they care to understand how the industry works. They'll likely use the bank to undercut existing players, while propping it up by manipulating the stock / piling in their billions. The regulation comment is a misdirect, alot like claims of wanting to be regulated were a misdirect back with FTX -- these guys are far more likely to aggressively lobby for / pay the republicans to dismantle regulations in their favour, changing the landscape to their personal benefit. After the competition starts crumbling / they start moving towards a monopoly, they'll either turn it into a regular bank in terms of service (but under their control of course), or they'll intentionally tank it to gobble up whatever reserve/insurance funds exist, shifting that wealth into the billionaire's pockets too, and leaving people with few options other than "under the mattress" for their savings. That'd make people almost entirely dependant on maintaining a regular working income, completing the tech bro fascist wet dream of having indentured slaves that can't push back against any of their bullshit.

  • Remember when the oculus rift was going to be crowd funded and open source?

    Y-yeah.

    I'm sometimes having conspiracy theories that some of such people are not just scammers, and were purposefully planted. Lots of people had unpleasant (for corps and states) ideas about crowdfunding, self-organization, libertarianism, or maybe anarchism, whatever. Cryptocurrencies too are not all bad, they have their uses. Living in the USA you might not see those clearly. Crowdfunding is a good model (when you can sue the living hell out of scammers).

    It is an existing strategy, highlight your own mule as a leader, let them siphon the sympathizers of an idea to them, then let them loudly fail. You discover those people and their potential mechanisms which could have stayed hidden, and you undermine trust. Repeat until the field is clean. And by weeding out supporters of unfavorable ideas this way in portions, you gradually reduce those possible to act from people opposed to you. So it's a working strategy for building a totalitarian state (that's what they did in Russia), for creating a monopoly (that's what we had in the last 20 years in the web ; even FB, Google etc would initially play as supporters of some free and interoperable Internet, if you remember, they'd support XMPP and RSS here and there and put on nice faces ; then after siphoning the energy that could have went into building a working decentralized IM infrastructure or working decentralized social infrastructure, they'd stop being nice), for basically everything.

    I thought at some point that Russia's regime is some scourge Russia alone was subjected to, until I saw that it was actually one of the first to show signs of a global change. Probably because it had less inertia due to being weakened after USSR's breakup.

  • Y-yeah.

    I'm sometimes having conspiracy theories that some of such people are not just scammers, and were purposefully planted. Lots of people had unpleasant (for corps and states) ideas about crowdfunding, self-organization, libertarianism, or maybe anarchism, whatever. Cryptocurrencies too are not all bad, they have their uses. Living in the USA you might not see those clearly. Crowdfunding is a good model (when you can sue the living hell out of scammers).

    It is an existing strategy, highlight your own mule as a leader, let them siphon the sympathizers of an idea to them, then let them loudly fail. You discover those people and their potential mechanisms which could have stayed hidden, and you undermine trust. Repeat until the field is clean. And by weeding out supporters of unfavorable ideas this way in portions, you gradually reduce those possible to act from people opposed to you. So it's a working strategy for building a totalitarian state (that's what they did in Russia), for creating a monopoly (that's what we had in the last 20 years in the web ; even FB, Google etc would initially play as supporters of some free and interoperable Internet, if you remember, they'd support XMPP and RSS here and there and put on nice faces ; then after siphoning the energy that could have went into building a working decentralized IM infrastructure or working decentralized social infrastructure, they'd stop being nice), for basically everything.

    I thought at some point that Russia's regime is some scourge Russia alone was subjected to, until I saw that it was actually one of the first to show signs of a global change. Probably because it had less inertia due to being weakened after USSR's breakup.

    Lol, wut? I was really just saying we shouldn't trust Palmer Lucky.

  • Lol, wut? I was really just saying we shouldn't trust Palmer Lucky.

    Well, it's a tendency. I just remembered the time when I was hearing about Oculus Rift often.

  • Personally, I wouldn't trust my savings to a guy with a goatee and a mullet

    Lice-ladder

  • This guy and so many other tech bros need to be imprisoned for life. Just for their beliefs, which manifests as shitty actions against the people.

    All American oligarchs are involved in large scale fraud, corruption and organized crime activity. Not to mention many of them are involved in enabling mass scale killings/deaths.

    We need judicial and criminal justice reform (Americans specifically, but this is a broader issue) that would allow for independent judicial proceedings, meaningful incentives to avoid a life of crime and real world rehabilitation.

    Incentives should include any scheme with more than X10 annual median salaries would require full asset seizure (everything, every last cent) a mandatory 20 years live-in community service program in positions such as junior janitor at an infectious disease hospital, junior de-mining specialist, junior assistant at a waste site renewal project.

    IT access outside of work channels would be restricted. One wouldn't be allowed outside of the location of their community service program outside of perhaps grocery and a trip to the library.

    No one should be forced to do this. If they don't like the terms, they are free to do 40 years in prison instead.

    To make sure that there are no schemes to avoid asset seizure, all family members, business partners or comparable persons of interest would be required to sign affidavits stating that they understand that if it is ever found that they aided in helping/not reporting such schemes, they will have all their assets seized, be required to do 20 years community service (or 40 years in prison) and all their family member and business would be required to sign similar affidavits.

    This is only for large scale fraud and corruption. Crimes around enabling mass killings/deaths (e.g. Zuckerberg and other FB executives enabling genocide of Rohingya people) would be best dealt with a public execution via guillotine.

  • All American oligarchs are involved in large scale fraud, corruption and organized crime activity. Not to mention many of them are involved in enabling mass scale killings/deaths.

    We need judicial and criminal justice reform (Americans specifically, but this is a broader issue) that would allow for independent judicial proceedings, meaningful incentives to avoid a life of crime and real world rehabilitation.

    Incentives should include any scheme with more than X10 annual median salaries would require full asset seizure (everything, every last cent) a mandatory 20 years live-in community service program in positions such as junior janitor at an infectious disease hospital, junior de-mining specialist, junior assistant at a waste site renewal project.

    IT access outside of work channels would be restricted. One wouldn't be allowed outside of the location of their community service program outside of perhaps grocery and a trip to the library.

    No one should be forced to do this. If they don't like the terms, they are free to do 40 years in prison instead.

    To make sure that there are no schemes to avoid asset seizure, all family members, business partners or comparable persons of interest would be required to sign affidavits stating that they understand that if it is ever found that they aided in helping/not reporting such schemes, they will have all their assets seized, be required to do 20 years community service (or 40 years in prison) and all their family member and business would be required to sign similar affidavits.

    This is only for large scale fraud and corruption. Crimes around enabling mass killings/deaths (e.g. Zuckerberg and other FB executives enabling genocide of Rohingya people) would be best dealt with a public execution via guillotine.

    I like your proposal. Actually I would also add certain other jobs like daycare worker (after a thourough background check including checking their computers and phones for child porn), certified nurse aide or farm picker. I can speak about the great need for nurse aides. We have a massive shortage of healthcare workers, and it’s even worse at the nurse aide level because the work is tiring but pays so little. Why should immigrants be funnelled into these jobs to make up for the labor gap in the healthcare sector? We need born citizens to also pick up the slack, and learn how to care for their fellow man.

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    Wasn't this the guy who stole all tech for his VR headset from another company?

  • J.F.C.

    How many more monetary scams do we need before we can stop this shit so the easily scammed don't lose more money?

    This is UNIQUELY designed to happen right now because of Trump,.and it's a a fucking scam that will beat work RIGHT NOW because of that.

    Until there is no more money to grift. Which even at this impressive rate of grifting and corruption, is still going to take a while, because there is a lot of wealth in the US to pilfer.

  • Their beliefs affect millions of people, and they have the money to fund ventures that are in line with their shitty beliefs.

    So jail them on funding those ventures. Thought crimes are a bad thing, no matter who you direct them at.

  • 44 Stimmen
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    eideen@lemmy.worldE
    Good question, I don’t know. If it is old shitty SSD you can exhaust lifetime write in days.
  • 437 Stimmen
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    jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.worksJ
    how about the military just stop paying for repairs entirely and let the equipment deteriorate and not replace it
  • 262 Stimmen
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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.
  • AI Leaves Digital Fingerprints in 13.5% of Scientific Papers

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    So they established that language patterns measured by word frequency changed between 2022 and 2024. But did they also analyse frequencies across other 2-year time periods? How much difference is there for a typical word? It looks like they have a per-frequency significance threshold but then analysed all words at once, meaning that random noise would turn up a bunch of "significant" results. Maybe this is addressed in the original paper which is not linked.
  • EU says it will continue rolling out AI legislation on schedule

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    I just can't get over how little we hear from academics RE: AI. It shows a clear disinterest and I feel like if they did bother to say anything it would be, "Proceed with caution while we study this further." Instead it's always the giant corporations with vested interest in this technology succeeding. It's just so painfully transparent.
  • I Counted All of the Yurts in Mongolia Using Machine Learning

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    I'd say, when there's a policy and its goals aren't reached, that's a policy failure. If people don't like the policy, that's an issue but it's a separate issue. It doesn't seem likely that people prefer living in tents, though. But to be fair, the government may be doing the best it can. It's ranked "Flawed Democracy" by The Economist Democracy Index. That's really good, I'd say, considering the circumstances. They are placed slightly ahead of Argentina and Hungary. OP has this to say: Due to the large number of people moving to urban locations, it has been difficult for the government to build the infrastructure needed for them. The informal settlements that grew from this difficulty are now known as ger districts. There have been many efforts to formalize and develop these areas. The Law on Allocation of Land to Mongolian Citizens for Ownership, passed in 2002, allowed for existing ger district residents to formalize the land they settled, and allowed for others to receive land from the government into the future. Along with the privatization of land, the Mongolian government has been pushing for the development of ger districts into areas with housing blocks connected to utilities. The plan for this was published in 2014 as Ulaanbaatar 2020 Master Plan and Development Approaches for 2030. Although progress has been slow (Choi and Enkhbat 7), they have been making progress in building housing blocks in ger distrcts. Residents of ger districts sell or exchange their plots to developers who then build housing blocks on them. Often this is in exchange for an apartment in the building, and often the value of the apartment is less than the land they originally had (Choi and Enkhbat 15). Based on what I’ve read about the ger districts, they have been around since at least the 1970s, and progress on developing them has been slow. When ineffective policy results in a large chunk of the populace generationally living in yurts on the outskirts of urban areas, it’s clear that there is failure. Choi, Mack Joong, and Urandulguun Enkhbat. “Distributional Effects of Ger Area Redevelopment in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.” International Journal of Urban Sciences, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 50–68. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2019.1571433.
  • You are Already On "The List"

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    Even if they're wrong. It's too late. You're already on the list. .... The only option is to destroy the list and those who will use it
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    If you're a developer, a startup founder, or part of a small team, you've poured countless hours into building your web application. You've perfected the UI, optimized the database, and shipped features your users love. But in the rush to build and deploy, a critical question often gets deferred: is your application secure? For many, the answer is a nervous "I hope so." The reality is that without a proper defense, your application is exposed to a barrage of automated attacks hitting the web every second. Threats like SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and Remote Code Execution are not just reserved for large enterprises; they are constant dangers for any application with a public IP address. The Security Barrier: When Cost and Complexity Get in the Way The standard recommendation is to place a Web Application Firewall (WAF) in front of your application. A WAF acts as a protective shield, inspecting incoming traffic and filtering out malicious requests before they can do any damage. It’s a foundational piece of modern web security. So, why doesn't everyone have one? Historically, robust WAFs have been complex and expensive. They required significant budgets, specialized knowledge to configure, and ongoing maintenance, putting them out of reach for students, solo developers, non-profits, and early-stage startups. This has created a dangerous security divide, leaving the most innovative and resource-constrained projects the most vulnerable. But that is changing. Democratizing Security: The Power of a Community WAF Security should be a right, not a privilege. Recognizing this, the landscape is shifting towards more accessible, community-driven tools. The goal is to provide powerful, enterprise-grade protection to everyone, for free. This is the principle behind the HaltDos Community WAF. It's a no-cost, perpetually free Web Application Firewall designed specifically for the community that has been underserved for too long. It’s not a stripped-down trial version; it’s a powerful security tool designed to give you immediate and effective protection against the OWASP Top 10 and other critical web threats. What Can You Actually Do with It? With a community WAF, you can deploy a security layer in minutes that: Blocks Malicious Payloads: Get instant, out-of-the-box protection against common attack patterns like SQLi, XSS, RCE, and more. Stops Bad Bots: Prevent malicious bots from scraping your content, attempting credential stuffing, or spamming your forms. Gives You Visibility: A real-time dashboard shows you exactly who is trying to attack your application and what methods they are using, providing invaluable security intelligence. Allows Customization: You can add your own custom security rules to tailor the protection specifically to your application's logic and technology stack. The best part? It can be deployed virtually anywhere—on-premises, in a private cloud, or with any major cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Get Started in Minutes You don't need to be a security guru to use it. The setup is straightforward, and the value is immediate. Protecting the project, you've worked so hard on is no longer a question of budget. Download: Get the free Community WAF from the HaltDos site. Deploy: Follow the simple instructions to set it up with your web server (it’s compatible with Nginx, Apache, and others). Secure: Watch the dashboard as it begins to inspect your traffic and block threats in real-time. Security is a journey, but it must start somewhere. For developers, startups, and anyone running a web application on a tight budget, a community WAF is the perfect first step. It's powerful, it's easy, and it's completely free.