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I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. Why would you bet your project against a technology? It’s analo

I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. Why would you bet your project against a technology? It’s analogous to refusing to use AI/ML because somewhere somehow someone is getting screwed. However, will this signal stand the test of time… my money is on, no.

Barrin92 5y ago
>Why would you bet your project against a technology strange question because obviously you should not shove every technology into every project. I think a lot of projects would be actually very well served by not jumping on the ML bandwagon and throwing significant resources at problems that can often be solved in simpler ways. And not just for technical reasons but as Zulip has decided for ethical reasons. Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. I would very much be in favour of projects more strongly considering the negative impacts a technology choice can have.
- madamelic 5y ago
  > Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. Yeah, except you are specifically calling out why their "we refuse to do crypto" post is just a virtue signal and a stupid one at that. Think of this way: If someone made a post saying their company refuses to use ML because Facebook has unethical machine-learning algorithms, they would get laughed to another planet. It's a straw-man opinion. It would be a far more reasonable blog post if they had said: "We don't need a blockchain or crypto tie-in because that has nothing to do with the problem we are solving nor will it solve it better". If they wanted to, they could do crypto and completely reject the current paradigm. They could easily create their own blockchain, create their own ecosystem in the hopes of changing the industry and status quo... or they could just not do anything because they aren't interested in crypto. Instead they made a virtue signal post to get kudos and back pats from crypto FUDs for the fact of crypto FUD-ing rather than the fact it's a reasonable and sound technical decision.
roywiggins 5y ago
Signalling stuff about what sort of company you are is sort of a whole industry, no?
- whymauri 5y ago
  It's come to the point that any communication of opinion is 'virtue signaling', since opinions are virtues and communications are signaling. I struggle to find much meaning in the phrase these days other than implicit disagreement.
  - potatolicious 5y ago
    "Virtue signaling" is an empty phrase - implicitly it's an accusation that the speaker doesn't actually believe what they are saying, and are only saying it for the approval of others. Not to mention, typically when the accusation is leveled, no attention is given to which virtues are being signaled, and why such virtues are bad. This is a common rhetorical trick and it's frustrating how often it works - rather than arguing the specifics of a situation (which the arguer finds difficult to justify) a more general, more vague, and more obfuscated point is argued instead. See also the OP and "betting a project against a technology", as an accusation of close-mindedness, which is amusingly vague. The blog post makes a point against a specific technology and goes to lengths to describe its reasoning, but a murkier, more abstract argument is made instead to color the company as somehow luddite-like.
  - DenisM 5y ago
    Virtue signaling is expressing a popular opinion for the purpose of being seen as someone who does. Some opinions are unpopular, others are expressed to enrich the conversation rather than the speaker. Neither is virtue signaling.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
NoraCodes 5y ago
I'm curious - do you genuinely not see any reason a Zulip user would want to ensure they could avoid having cryptocurrency features added to the product?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  I genuinely think that when one find oneself adverse to a general technology (not implementation) , while not understanding any of its benefits, history or mechanism, and one uses this position of ignorance to argue against it, and cannot see how anyone else would find it useful, one has lost. Yes.
  - NoraCodes 5y ago
    > while not understanding any of its benefits, history or mechanism I've been in crypto since I was mining on Butterfly Labs hardware in 2013. It was a scam then and it's a scam now.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      I want to understand why you think it is a scam. From the very first moment I bought my first sats I knew these would be super valuable, probably the most valuable thing I would ever own. I only ever mined Alts, which from a maximalist perspective seems more like a scam. Of course, it’s just perspective. The only wrong ones are the eth maximalists. :-)
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    It seems like you’re the one not responding to criticism, randomhodler84. Just point to the mysticism of “benefits, history, and mechanism” of this “general technology” and call it a day.
  - recursive 5y ago
    So, if I were to be, theoretically, adverse to a technology that has no benefits, then I lost?
hhaha88 5y ago
Somewhere someone getting screwed is the whole species when it comes to blockchain (and many other superfluous industrial behaviors to supporting life). Edit for the downvoters: Moral relativism works just fine for me too. Good luck, idgaf
smoldesu 5y ago
> I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. I agree, and it's pretty obvious from the tone of the article that they haven't quite done their research, either. > However, will this signal stand the test of time… my money is on, no. This is where I disagree though. I find it wildly hard to believe that there is a future for cryptocurrency beyond it's current value. It's value right now is predicated almost entirely on hype, a resource that is quickly starting to die out now that NFTs and cryptocurrency aren't rallying half as hard as they were last year or the year before. Maybe this comment won't stand the test of time either, but it would take a hell of a revelation to push further adoption of crypto and somehow further inflate it's value.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Maybe that revelation will become more apparent in the next period from inflation. :-) Many world currencies are pushing 20% (reported figures, so reality is much higher). Btw Bitcoin was invented in 2008 with the explicit purpose of being an inflation hedge, cannot be debased.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Oh, Bitcoin has much bigger problems than inflation. It's going to run out of mining incentives in less than half a decade at this rate, and transaction prices are so high that you may as well just declare it dead for conventional purposes right now. I was on the Bitcoin bandwagon back in 2014, but it's current state gives me no hope for the future. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong, but adoption rates and social issues do not a successful currency make.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      No no, mining will occur until ~feb 2140. We are nowhere close to the mining incentives disappearing. Transaction prices are currently 1sat/byte $0.09/tx (cheapest possible price). If the last time you dabbled was 2014, I would encourage a review in 2021 as maturity has greatly increased. It’s still early too. There will only be 243k Sats per human on Earth. Get stackin’
gonehome 5y ago
These chat SaaS companies are awful anyway, hopefully there will be some real Web3 alternative to them.
- antifa 5y ago
  I can't wait for spending $100 to mint a lazy lion and selling it for $30,000 of ETH to be a cornerstone feature of the next IRC clone I use!
  - gonehome 5y ago
    If you can build a service that’s able to depend on protocols and user community incentives to sustain itself then that’s better. Centralized SaaS apps optimized for ads that could be shutdown, sold to languish at salesforce, or have constant spam aren’t the best we can do. Zulip is better than discord on the above metrics, but doesn’t solve all of them. I think what urbit is doing is cool and solves more. There are other web3 experiments going on that are cool too.
eftychis 5y ago
Agreed. Companies are beholden to their customers and investors -- nothing to do with technology. Might not make sense now. Or ever. Who knows? History is filled with companies failing or succeeding depending on such pivoting choices. But you don't see netflix being big due to dvds. (And who knows maybe this comment will not age at all.) Use and improve technology.
acdha 5y ago
I find it useful: it tells me that the project leaders have principles and are also capable of making good technical decisions. One of the main reasons why so many blockchain integrations get significant negative pushback is that blockchains aren't effective at accomplishing the purported goals. A project which is run by the whims of VCs or the owners' conflicts of interests (e.g. Reddit's decision to boost their co-founder's other holdings) are likely to make more than one decision which is contrary to the interests of their users.
- baby 5y ago
  That article contains many false claims so I wouldn’t be so sure about the good technical decisions.
  - acdha 5y ago
    If that's the case, you should have no trouble identifying at least one claim and the evidence that you believe makes it untrue.
    - jimmydorry 5y ago
      Not GP, but the first term you can search for in an article like these is "anonymous". If the writer claims Bitcoin allows anonymous transactions, then they have failed the first and most basic test of crypto literacy. From the article: >Because [BTC] transactions are anonymous and (generally) irreversible, crypto assets are also a prime target for thieves. Unless you are talking about a privacy coin, most crypto is pseudononymous. A record of every transaction is kept in perpetuity and can later be linked to a given person by following the trail of records when someone in the chain eventually provides a service that has to implement KYC (Know Your Client) protocols (e.g. an exchange, a bank, or a typical e-commerce merchant).
      - ethanbond 5y ago
        > … someone in the chain eventually provides a service that has to implement KYC (Know Your Client) protocols (e.g. an exchange, a bank, or a typical e-commerce merchant). This doesn’t have to exist for a given transaction. This bitcoin is effectively public for the vast majority of people and it is effectively anonymous for those who are highly motivated to remain so.
tshaddox 5y ago
I'm confused. If you're saying that betting your project against a technology could have significant impact on the success of your project, then isn't that very much the opposite of "virtue signaling"? Or do you use "virtue signaling" to mean "any public stance that I don't like"?

Barrin92 5y ago

>Why would you bet your project against a technology strange question because obviously you should not shove every technology into every project. I think a lot of projects would be actually very well served by not jumping on the ML bandwagon and throwing significant resources at problems that can often be solved in simpler ways. And not just for technical reasons but as Zulip has decided for ethical reasons. Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. I would very much be in favour of projects more strongly considering the negative impacts a technology choice can have.

madamelic 5y ago
> Just like crypto's mentioned impact on climate or lack of regulation ML often has negative impact on privacy, data ownership/collection, bias and so on. Yeah, except you are specifically calling out why their "we refuse to do crypto" post is just a virtue signal and a stupid one at that. Think of this way: If someone made a post saying their company refuses to use ML because Facebook has unethical machine-learning algorithms, they would get laughed to another planet. It's a straw-man opinion. It would be a far more reasonable blog post if they had said: "We don't need a blockchain or crypto tie-in because that has nothing to do with the problem we are solving nor will it solve it better". If they wanted to, they could do crypto and completely reject the current paradigm. They could easily create their own blockchain, create their own ecosystem in the hopes of changing the industry and status quo... or they could just not do anything because they aren't interested in crypto. Instead they made a virtue signal post to get kudos and back pats from crypto FUDs for the fact of crypto FUD-ing rather than the fact it's a reasonable and sound technical decision.

roywiggins 5y ago

Signalling stuff about what sort of company you are is sort of a whole industry, no?

whymauri 5y ago
It's come to the point that any communication of opinion is 'virtue signaling', since opinions are virtues and communications are signaling. I struggle to find much meaning in the phrase these days other than implicit disagreement.
- potatolicious 5y ago
  "Virtue signaling" is an empty phrase - implicitly it's an accusation that the speaker doesn't actually believe what they are saying, and are only saying it for the approval of others. Not to mention, typically when the accusation is leveled, no attention is given to which virtues are being signaled, and why such virtues are bad. This is a common rhetorical trick and it's frustrating how often it works - rather than arguing the specifics of a situation (which the arguer finds difficult to justify) a more general, more vague, and more obfuscated point is argued instead. See also the OP and "betting a project against a technology", as an accusation of close-mindedness, which is amusingly vague. The blog post makes a point against a specific technology and goes to lengths to describe its reasoning, but a murkier, more abstract argument is made instead to color the company as somehow luddite-like.
- DenisM 5y ago
  Virtue signaling is expressing a popular opinion for the purpose of being seen as someone who does. Some opinions are unpopular, others are expressed to enrich the conversation rather than the speaker. Neither is virtue signaling.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

NoraCodes 5y ago

I'm curious - do you genuinely not see any reason a Zulip user would want to ensure they could avoid having cryptocurrency features added to the product?

randomhodler84 5y ago
I genuinely think that when one find oneself adverse to a general technology (not implementation) , while not understanding any of its benefits, history or mechanism, and one uses this position of ignorance to argue against it, and cannot see how anyone else would find it useful, one has lost. Yes.
- NoraCodes 5y ago
  > while not understanding any of its benefits, history or mechanism I've been in crypto since I was mining on Butterfly Labs hardware in 2013. It was a scam then and it's a scam now.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    I want to understand why you think it is a scam. From the very first moment I bought my first sats I knew these would be super valuable, probably the most valuable thing I would ever own. I only ever mined Alts, which from a maximalist perspective seems more like a scam. Of course, it’s just perspective. The only wrong ones are the eth maximalists. :-)
- ethanbond 5y ago
  It seems like you’re the one not responding to criticism, randomhodler84. Just point to the mysticism of “benefits, history, and mechanism” of this “general technology” and call it a day.
- recursive 5y ago
  So, if I were to be, theoretically, adverse to a technology that has no benefits, then I lost?

hhaha88 5y ago

Somewhere someone getting screwed is the whole species when it comes to blockchain (and many other superfluous industrial behaviors to supporting life). Edit for the downvoters: Moral relativism works just fine for me too. Good luck, idgaf

smoldesu 5y ago

> I don’t think discord eth integration is the best idea but this article is Just a virtue signal. I agree, and it's pretty obvious from the tone of the article that they haven't quite done their research, either. > However, will this signal stand the test of time… my money is on, no. This is where I disagree though. I find it wildly hard to believe that there is a future for cryptocurrency beyond it's current value. It's value right now is predicated almost entirely on hype, a resource that is quickly starting to die out now that NFTs and cryptocurrency aren't rallying half as hard as they were last year or the year before. Maybe this comment won't stand the test of time either, but it would take a hell of a revelation to push further adoption of crypto and somehow further inflate it's value.

randomhodler84 5y ago
Maybe that revelation will become more apparent in the next period from inflation. :-) Many world currencies are pushing 20% (reported figures, so reality is much higher). Btw Bitcoin was invented in 2008 with the explicit purpose of being an inflation hedge, cannot be debased.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Oh, Bitcoin has much bigger problems than inflation. It's going to run out of mining incentives in less than half a decade at this rate, and transaction prices are so high that you may as well just declare it dead for conventional purposes right now. I was on the Bitcoin bandwagon back in 2014, but it's current state gives me no hope for the future. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong, but adoption rates and social issues do not a successful currency make.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    No no, mining will occur until ~feb 2140. We are nowhere close to the mining incentives disappearing. Transaction prices are currently 1sat/byte $0.09/tx (cheapest possible price). If the last time you dabbled was 2014, I would encourage a review in 2021 as maturity has greatly increased. It’s still early too. There will only be 243k Sats per human on Earth. Get stackin’

gonehome 5y ago

These chat SaaS companies are awful anyway, hopefully there will be some real Web3 alternative to them.

antifa 5y ago
I can't wait for spending $100 to mint a lazy lion and selling it for $30,000 of ETH to be a cornerstone feature of the next IRC clone I use!
- gonehome 5y ago
  If you can build a service that’s able to depend on protocols and user community incentives to sustain itself then that’s better. Centralized SaaS apps optimized for ads that could be shutdown, sold to languish at salesforce, or have constant spam aren’t the best we can do. Zulip is better than discord on the above metrics, but doesn’t solve all of them. I think what urbit is doing is cool and solves more. There are other web3 experiments going on that are cool too.

eftychis 5y ago

Agreed. Companies are beholden to their customers and investors -- nothing to do with technology. Might not make sense now. Or ever. Who knows? History is filled with companies failing or succeeding depending on such pivoting choices. But you don't see netflix being big due to dvds. (And who knows maybe this comment will not age at all.) Use and improve technology.

acdha 5y ago

I find it useful: it tells me that the project leaders have principles and are also capable of making good technical decisions. One of the main reasons why so many blockchain integrations get significant negative pushback is that blockchains aren't effective at accomplishing the purported goals. A project which is run by the whims of VCs or the owners' conflicts of interests (e.g. Reddit's decision to boost their co-founder's other holdings) are likely to make more than one decision which is contrary to the interests of their users.

baby 5y ago
That article contains many false claims so I wouldn’t be so sure about the good technical decisions.
- acdha 5y ago
  If that's the case, you should have no trouble identifying at least one claim and the evidence that you believe makes it untrue.
  - jimmydorry 5y ago
    Not GP, but the first term you can search for in an article like these is "anonymous". If the writer claims Bitcoin allows anonymous transactions, then they have failed the first and most basic test of crypto literacy. From the article: >Because [BTC] transactions are anonymous and (generally) irreversible, crypto assets are also a prime target for thieves. Unless you are talking about a privacy coin, most crypto is pseudononymous. A record of every transaction is kept in perpetuity and can later be linked to a given person by following the trail of records when someone in the chain eventually provides a service that has to implement KYC (Know Your Client) protocols (e.g. an exchange, a bank, or a typical e-commerce merchant).
    - ethanbond 5y ago
      > … someone in the chain eventually provides a service that has to implement KYC (Know Your Client) protocols (e.g. an exchange, a bank, or a typical e-commerce merchant). This doesn’t have to exist for a given transaction. This bitcoin is effectively public for the vast majority of people and it is effectively anonymous for those who are highly motivated to remain so.

tshaddox 5y ago

I'm confused. If you're saying that betting your project against a technology could have significant impact on the success of your project, then isn't that very much the opposite of "virtue signaling"? Or do you use "virtue signaling" to mean "any public stance that I don't like"?