To take advantage of the ability to send money that way without the volatility

Let’s be honest, it’s principally for illicit use, a tiny fraction of privacy folks and then a lot of people caught in between who don’t understand yield but want to bet on a volatile asset and have to use a stablecoin to go between. (Because the backers of the volatile thing are doing something illicit.)

You are a decade late, nowadays stablecoins are commonly used in international trade. Most Alibaba sellers accept USDT nowadays, same for Indian ones.

> stablecoins are commonly used in international trade

For a rounding error value of "commonly," sure. (Catering to a financially-constrained market is good business. But it, by definition, will never be an important one in the grand scheme of things.)

They’re taking credit for their own success? I don’t know how you can construe that to be the industry overall.

You mean Toyota and Tesla’s success? Let’s be real - the Prius and then Model S kickstarted the EV revolution.

If you read the history you’ll see the appropriate word is “restarted” the EV revolution. It was on and off again in a slow march to the point that allowed Tesla to exist. I’m not diminishing the role Tesla played, but it has to be taken in context. They stood on shoulders.

An over 125 year, often abandoned, stuttering march filled with stories of invisible battles by the entrenched to keep the status quo.

I think looking at every carmaker’s lineup should make it obvious that they don’t give a crap what powers a car, they are just trying to sell what’s popular. EVs were trendy for a couple years and a margin-subsidizing $7000 was available so everybody enthusiastically brought out EVs. Now they’re less popular so they’re all pulling back. Arguably even Tesla is doing so, given that Musk has intimidated that he didn’t really think Tesla was going to keep selling cars forever.

When the demand is sufficient, the cars will be sold in numbers to match it. Demand will increase as it becomes practical to own an EV for more people. This mainly has to do with charging infrastructure at every level, which is capital intensive for both individuals and governments.

Do you suggest we ignore or include in this history the original contributions of the first electric cars from all the way back in the single digits of the 1900s?

There was a long time between those cars and the modern electric car where the only thing electric was "golf carts" (not general purpose cars), or homemade conversions. The EV1 was the first commercial car in the memory of most people alive today. The 1900s ones were fun/interesting historical things, but not practical.

Those were important too, but the ev1 started that modern ev.

It's not a success if you quit the race at the finish line, even if you were in the lead.

Right before that in the paragraph:

> The EV1 introduced technologies that remain foundational to modern EVs

That's why it's called Machine Payments Protocol, instead of Agent Payments Protocol

It has nothing to do with Agents/LLMs which is why it's not called "Agentic Payment Protocol."

It's an API for making purchases instead of interacting with a website of unknown flow.

The text literally starts with:

  > We believe agents will become an integral part of the internet economy, and they need the ability to transact with businesses and one another. 
  > MPP provides a specification for agents and services to coordinate payments programmatically, enabling microtransactions, recurring payments, and more.

Obviously agents are the big thing right now, but that doesn't change the fact that MPP is an automation solution

Okay or maybe they won the contract for `.gov` in 2023: https://www.cloudflare.com/press/press-releases/2023/cloudfl...

What does any of this have to do with EVs?

There's a lot of programming that has nothing to do with SpringBoot - and I say this as someone who works in a backend team that uses SpringBoot for all our apps.

iOS (for example) already has that technical standard in place and usable.

That infrastructure is literally already there. It's done and live in some areas.

Is there a problem with this? Most users are using an iPhone and most iPhones already know the accurate age of their user

I think it will be an extension of parental control and shift that accountability/responsibility upwards; Meta is not anyone's real life parents anyway.

People will just forge IDs with LLMs. This measure is basically unenforceable, and wastes everyone's time and money.

I’ve heard Android is a more common OS. In any case, if your OS fails to ask a user their age, it’s banned.

Okay, sorry yes that was an oversimplification. Android does ask your age as well, so that's all of them for mobile phones.

Android doesn't ask your age, Google does for an account. You can use an android phone without a google account. Most people don't but the distinction is important because degoogled android phones will also have to comply.

No, unless the law mandates it.

So for example operating system that does not ask this question could simply declare itself "inappropriate"/"illegal" in the jurisdiction.

Say, GrapheneOS can explicitly disallow image downloads from Californian IPs and not sell phones with preinstalled GOS there.

You don't need to be complaint with the Mongolian law to sell in Burkina Faso.

Similarly they don't need to be complaint with Ohio law if they do not operate and have presence there.

American companies that decide to surveil users ont heir websites with pervasive tracking without consent would only contravene the European GDPR if they allowed EU users to use them. Block the EU (famous http/451), and they're in the clear.

IMO, but IANAL.

This is what Ageless and some apps are deliberating. I wonder if my ToS can protect me as a scientific calculator maintainer; if I mandate that it cannot be installed within jurisdictions that ban or fine maintainers who fail to implement the age checks.

Edit: I have no control over who links to my library.

What about OSes that power shared devices you use in public, like airline ticket kiosks and bank ATMs?

I'm fine with default settings:

> for all users that the operator has actual knowledge to be a minor, the operator shall use specified default settings for the minor.

I just think it should be opt-in. Applications should presume <13 unless the user opts in.

I'm fine with that too as a consumer.

As an "operating system provider," the law as written still requires me to provide an accessible interface for you to indicate your age to the operator.

Should we be asking your age every single time you use a credit card reader or ATM? If not, embedded operating system providers need exceptions to the law in each state that adopts their own non-standardized approach.