They don't even mention the country Iran or the war by name, because it's a DNC op and the DNC also supports war in Iran. They don't mention Israel or Gaza, because the main organizers and funders are Zionist. They have no concrete demands. It's a distraction, a release valve, controlled opposition.
We adopted three kittens that were found locked into a suitcase and thrown into the trash. Our house is in hills with coyotes so these cats would not survive for any length of time outside. They'd probably also be sent to the pound if we didn't adopt them. I feel bad for confining them in our house but I don't know if there would have been a better outcome for them.
Totally agree on more rare/exotic animals though - they shouldn't be subject to unnatural conditions like this.
My partner and I rescued Ramón, our first cat ever, from outside a convenience store near our house. He was already an adult by the time we met him. We would always see him outside running from stray dogs (I'm from Mexico, specifically from an area with a lot of stray dogs and cat) and, generally, on alert.
Now, even if we leave our doors open he prefers to stay inside the house with his little brother Vicente, another cat we adopted. We regularly make new toys and play with them.
Vicente has been with us since he was around 1 month old (now 6 months old) so he's way more curious about the outside. We are preparing to start walking them out though I have a feeling we will have to drag Ramón out of the house.
I wouldn't feel bad for confining your cats to your house! They are probably very happy :)
I also ended up with a stray, but he had been abandoned as a kitten when I got him. He had zero interest in the outside beyond watching the squirrels through the window screens, which he did with rapt attention.
Decentralized
> the transfer of authority, decision-making, or operational functions away from a central authority to smaller, local, or distributed nodes, systems, or entities
Most Treasuries are held by US banks, investment firms and municipalities. I'm pretty sure those firms hold a good chunk of global stablecoin volume, given the nonexistent regulation of crypto in the US relative to other countries.
No-one in the real world wants to be paid with a $USR. Most everyone wants a cashapp/zelle/PayPal/wire transfer. The bullshit payment systems gained ground on crypto while crypto became more difficult/less usable
If you track the FATFs crushing of bearer bonds, bearer notes, non-KYC/non-AML offshore banking, and Hawala it almost perfectly tracks with the rise of crypto.
I don't know what USR is, but I would prefer to be paid in USDT or USC if Wealthsimple supported it as deposit method. When I withdraw, I do Deel -> Wise -> Interac e-Transfer -> Bank -> Interac e-Transfer -> Wealthsimple. This is incredibly stupid and I am forced to buy Canadian dollars. For groceries or electronics, you can buy gift cards using crypto.
But you do have to deal with bullshit payment systems. I can't receive stablecoins in my regular bank account, I'd have to set up some crypto nonsense on DankRocketBets or whatever for it to even work.
Why would I do this when I can already receive actual USD without any extra ceremony?
Stablecoins are a solution in search of a problem.
The problem presents itself when you have dirty money to launder. It isn't a product for non-criminals but they have to convince enough gullible people to participate and blend in with them.
If your employer does direct deposit of USD into your USD bank account, you don't need stable coins. This is not the case for most people outside of the U.S.
Most people don't realize they're inside a plexiglass shielded financial jail until they try to do something like wiring money for some legal activity in someplace spicy or on the FATF grey list.
If you fall into the middle bands of uses, or in the upper class that can just bend or make the rules, then the financial system is well oiled and it looks like the people questioning it are just cranks.
It's true that a lot of those in the outer bands are criminals but others are things like "buying a truck to build an orphanage for starving Iraqi children just outside of terrorist territory" or "wanted an investment visa in some corrupt island paradise and as it turns out no bank will open up account for purposes of 'international wires to the Comoros' "
Oh yeah, "most people outside the US" are looking to build orphanages in deeply sanctioned war zones. How could I have forgotten.
Come on now, that's absurd. If this is your best use case for stablecoins - groping for concocted scenarios to rationalise their existence
- I stand by what I said earlier: they're a solution in search of a problem.
One of the two is very close to something that actually happened to me. I tried to open up a bank account for paying immigration related costs to a particular shithole country, which is both legal and was part of a fully legal endeavor, but no bank would do it.
The other example is somewhat concocted but rooted in the time I spent in Iraq and noting almost all transactions are performed outside the banking system, in part because banking is inaccessible and people often don't have access to KYC documents.
It's really not absurd. As soon as you start trying to do anything interesting the KYC/AML burdens get greater until eventually you realize the compliance officers are just trying to get you to go away (or just deny you outright), get interesting enough and then suddenly despite fully complying with the law you find the walls are closed around you. Most people never find out because they never have occasion to try, they do a bunch of boring domestic transactions plus maybe some international trade with a few well known entities, then they just shout people are making up absurdities.
Clearly your situation of trying to obtain residency in the Comoros by investment would raise eyebrows at banks whose job it is to monitor tax compliance. I don't think you're describing an everyman kind of scenario.
I also don't entirely understand why you're even rationalising the purpose of the account to the bank. Can't you just open an account for any purpose? It takes me five minutes to open an account online, and I've never once been asked to explain or justify anything (in many decades). I use my accounts robustly, including for international transfers (I've lived on two continents in the last four years). I even once paid for a trip to North Korea out of an ordinary bank account. My bank never batted an eye.
Maybe you're just dealing with a bad bank, or an over-regulated banking system (Europe?). You realise you can walk into any US bank right now and they'll just open an account for you with nothing more than some accurate ID? And the same holds for much of the rest of the world? The problem you're trying to solve is already solved.
>> The other example is somewhat concocted but rooted in the time I spent in Iraq and noting almost all transactions are performed outside the banking system, in part because banking is inaccessible and people often don't have access to KYC documents.
Unsophisticated semi-literate farmers are the last demographic anyone is reasonably expecting to open their crypto brokerage accounts and start trading synthetic USD derivatives.
These are just not realistic scenarios. This is what people say when they rack their brains trying to come up with some reason stablecoins might be useful. I feel like you're just confirming that they're a solution in search of a problem.
> You realise you can walk into any US bank right now and they'll just open an account for you with nothing more than some accurate ID?
There's an ocean in the way, not to mention how risky visiting looks right now. I changed my name recently and the one US bank that I managed to get an account with (so that US clients can pay me without weirdness) won't accept any kind of documentation without going there in person (and I'm not sure I can provide anything they'll accept even if I did go there in person). What now?
Well no matter what you say it's always nuh uh, doesn't count or some variation of why can't you just be an "everyman." It's hard to argue with a dogmatic position that is based on feelings. You can tell such person what's actually happened to me when I tried to open an account with only "accurate ID" (a US passport) and they literally won't do it while you are homeless because they require a proof of address for KYC even if you have none. Almost everything they have asserted is plainly false. They also claim to have used their bank account to pay for trade in North Korea, a comprehensively sanctioned entity, which seems to be a public written confession of committing a serious crime just to own the crypto use crowd for internet points lol.
People in the middle bands of uses are just ignorantly bliss. And moving between "2 continents" in some vague most likely semi-developed white listed countries in most cases doesn't fall outside the middle bands of uses. So you end up with people shaking their fists at the sky crying that crypto exists, with their fingers in their ears and loudly proclaiming anyone using it are just making up absurd contrived scenarios.
>> They also claim to have used their bank account to pay for trade in North Korea, a comprehensively sanctioned entity, which seems to be a public written confession of committing a serious crime just to own the crypto use crowd for internet points lol
Lol. Thanks, Mr Google Esq.
I was indeed in North Korea. It was not particularly hard to get to before COVID (I'm told it's harder now). You have no idea what the laws of my jurisdiction are were at the time I went, or the purpose of my visit and whether sanctions even extend to it, whether I sought any exemptions from my government, etc - but please tell me more about all these alleged serious crimes you've just discovered on Wikipedia.
>> So you end up with people shaking their fists at the sky crying that crypto exists, with their fingers in their ears and loudly proclaiming anyone using it are just making up absurd contrived scenarios.
See, the problem with all your posts is that you're just spinning one tale after another. You need crypto for all the orphanages you're building in war zones. You need crypto for illiterate Iraqi farmers. You need crypto for your Comoros citizenship purchases. Never mind that none of that makes any sense - it's everyone else who's not listening to you! And all your super legitimate, not at all made up, not at all tax fraud related use cases for stable coins!
Why is it more absurd to want to build an orphanage in Iraq or buy a residence visa somewhere off the beaten path than it is to proclaim you've gotten sanctions exemptions for North Korea in the context of you explicitly pointing to the use of US bank accounts? Why is your anecdotes somehow more valid than mine?
Suddenly when it comes to your North Korea escapades (while proclaiming about mr. "everyman", lmao) I just don't have all the facts and nuance, but you just handwave away any of the uses I point to. Get real.
I never said I obtained sanctions exemptions, I merely pointed out you're just straight up making stuff up when you're concocting "serious crimes" with no knowledge of the underlying facts whatsoever. Which seems like a bit of a pattern with your posts, to be frank.
It's relatively trivial to visit North Korea, and there are many reasons one might do so that may not fall afoul of any sanctions (journalism, research, aid, and so on). It's ludicrous to proclaim you're building orphanages in Iraq for which you require crypto stablecoins. These are not even remotely comparable claims.
It's funny how you can know all the facts to be sure stable coins aren't applicable to some others' scenario but if someone dare point out that you paid a comprehensively sanctioned country by god they're not allowed to use the same evidentiary standards you have presented. And for the record, I said it seems as if a confession to a crime, not that it actually was one.
Seems as if you don't like it when your own logic is used on you. Which seems like a bit of a pattern with your posts, to be frank.
Lol. Evidentiary standards? Mate, I don't give a flying fig if you believe me or not. You asked for my experiences, so I gave them to you. I certainly don't believe you, so you're free to not believe me. Seems only fair.
Your claimed use cases for stablecoins are utterly fantastical and I think your posts speak for themselves.
I did not ask for your experiences. You were the one asking ("waiting"). Then just dismissing anyone that told you because it was never a genuine question.
Pick an FATF grey list country that isn't sanctioned by your country. Then try to wire money there. Let me know how it goes and whether you really aren't asked to explain anything.
Running down a list of corner cases means that you've already accepted the central idea. It's a classic internet troll-as-in-fishing gambit for derailing conversations that's been weirdly normalized.
Stablecoins enable cash-like (instantly redeemable and verifiable) payments for large amounts, for almost free.
In EU countries, you can't now buy a car with cash. You have to buy a bearer's check from your bank, which is expensive, requires that both parties have a brick and mortar bank, and doesn't work cross-border. Stablecoins solve this.
It was good while ago, but last time I bought a car I just did bank transfer. SEPA transfers are entirely free. Was kinda amazed that they just handed me keys when I showed them the receipt from my own online bank...
If you get scammed, it requires you to sue, many EU countries have very long waiting times for those, so you'll be carless and money less for a long time. Cash or crypto solves this elegantly.
Intra-bank transfers are instant, so is PayPal/Revolut/Zelle or whatever else, and many inter-bank transfers are also instant or very nearly so in the EU. None of these, except maybe cash, protect you from someone sinply not delivering the physical good (car + car keys) after the transfer completes.
From a legal standpoint, the bank transfer speed is anyway irrelevant - you first sign a sale contract that makes the car yours and the money theirs, before anything actually exchanges hands. If one party fails to deliver the money or the other fails to deliver the good, they are anyway liable. With instant transfers, the buyer is more likely to get scammed; with delayed transfers, both the buyer and the seller are equally as likely to get scammed - that is the only difference.
Many EU countries have limits on cash payments, and the EU will enforce a union-wide limit of 10,000€ in 2027. Of course, this limit won't be reevaluated over time, so the real value will decrease with inflation.
The use case would be for transactions between individuals. A friend working at a large industrial firm told me recently that crypto would solve a problem that they have in Asia: orders are often done during auctions from the producer, and require instant payments; however the payment rails take two weeks to clear a transaction. Crypto would fix this.
The fact that it's not widespread doesn't mean that there isn't a usecase.
Flakes are de facto standard at this point. Expressions are easy once you get used to them - in fact the Nix language grows on many of us, including myself, once you internalize it.
Using AI to generate Nix config is a superpower. Because the entire system is declared in a single set of config, you can basically spell cast any system you want. I one-shotted a Linux distro with custom branding for boot, installation screen, and login screen, and VPN and dev tools installed and configured by default, at a fortune 500 tech company.
KDE is an experience that is not that different in quality from Windows. And if 75% of users used KDE as their desktop instead of Windows, I promise you that the rough edges would be worked out. It has nothing to do with Windows having better UX or quality.
What a horrible take, nothing but a tautology. It only runs the apps most people want to use because it's installed on so many computers, so developers target it. Linux can run anything Windows can. It's the same hardware, and if it was a much more popular desktop you bet your life that banks and streaming companies and AAA game developers would target linux as a supported platform. Has nothing to do with the quality of Windows, only the install base, which was the original point.
It doesn’t matter why it only runs apps most people want to use. As long as you don’t think a “quality” of something is that “it can do what I want it to do”.
As long as you think of "quality" as "something that is not quality". bad logic. There are many systems that are only usable because they are popular but everyone hates them and thinks they are garbage. Market capture doesn't equal quality, sorry, that's a horrible take.
That's a fair argument as to why someone should use windows. What does that have to do with quality though? You are confusing two things. Whether you should use it or recommend it is not the same as whether it's good quality.
You do have to ask yourself why Windows has such a high market share. Chrome OS is Linux based but still managed to poke a deeper hole than much of us expected in the consumer space. Android is Linux based and practically annihilated Windows CE off the face of the earth. Mac OS has been competing fairly well with Windows despite being hardware exclusive. I very very very rarely see a Linux distribution in the wild being used on a PC/Laptop. When I do, it's usually being used by a nerd who knows their thing.
I think the reason Windows is so successful is because it's stable, bulletproof and easy. You don't have to burn an ISO to a USB and boot from it, partition a disk and install it. You don't have to grep grub at any time. You rarely have to use PowerShell for much of anything at all, including device management, managing services and even tweaking the registry.
The "desktop environment" is the operating system, not a seperate abstraction around it. There's no research required on what distro works best for you, what package manager is ideal, what file system to use, what window manager to use, what desktop environment to use. There's no messing with repositories either. No issues with drivers that require compiling from source, no marking an executable as "executable" through chmod.
I like Linux, but the Linux community overestimate how usable it is outside of their meta, and underappreciate their own mental model of what a computer is and how it differs from the layman. Most people want to open their laptop, double click a browser and watch Family Guy funny moments on facebook.com without having to troubleshoot PulseAudio because it's suddenly gone super quiet.
ChromeOS did not poke a hole in the consumer space. It’s the B2B of hardware where the user is not the buyer. To a first approximation, no one wants a ChromeOS based computer for their home anymore than they want to run Salesforce at home. It is cheap and from what I have heard, Google’s MDM software is top notch.
Android “won” as pyrrhic of a victory as it is since Android manufacturers besides Samsung make very little profit and every one who has money (again to a first approximation) buys iPhones. It won because Google gave it away, shared ad revenue with OEMs and it bent over backwards to the carriers and Apple wouldn’t.
And yes Linux would save OEMs maybe $30 on licensing Windows. But OEMs make mire than that on bundleware.
It's so simple. It's because windows DID have a much better desktop experience in the past, for decades, and they built a trillion dollar company around it. It's no longer the clear winner though, and they are simply surfing the momentum of having an existing user base that doesn't want to relearn apps and UIs, apps and games that only work on windows due to the size of the user base, and general marketing and sales and existing corporate contracts.
None of this has anything to do with the quality of the desktop of Linux or windows. If Linux had 75% market share I promise you all those things above would quickly become true for Linux as well.
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