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As soon as I saw the headline, I assumed something of this sort. Maybe it's naive, but I miss the days when you could just trust (however unfounded) open source

by _zagj 1y ago

As soon as I saw the headline, I assumed something of this sort. Maybe it's naive, but I miss the days when you could just trust (however unfounded) open source software. I never had to hesitate before downloading a distro or a package. Now I only install something if I absolutely need it.

oofbey 1y ago
[flagged]
- _zagj 1y ago
  You could argue that if not crypto, it would have been something else eventually, and that the heightened vigilance it has necessitated has made it more difficult for other motivated attackers (like state actors) to backdoor or compromise OSS. But as someone who doesn't use crypto, I completely get the "f*ck crypto" sentiment.
  - brokensegue 1y ago
    stealing other data is less lucrative. i'm not confident someone could empty my bank account even with my username/password
    - anonym29 1y ago
      other data is less lucrative than the $0 sitting in those static attacker wallets?
      - brokensegue 1y ago
        i think you're comparing apples and oranges. that they have so far failed to steal any coins does not mean anything with regards to this discussion
        anonym29 1y ago
        I don't know how familiar you are with the sheer scope of malware, black markets, data theft, various extortion techniques, but gaining the ability to drop an arbitrary .exe on Xubuntu.org and actually direct enough traffic to it that people notice it is worth a LOT more than $0.
- anonym29 1y ago
  The value of your labor is being systemically destroyed through deliberate currency manipulation by the US Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the US Government and US Treasury. You are more than twice as productive as your equivalent 1971 counterpart, but relative to inflation, he was being paid about the same as you. You make your employer twice as much money as he did but you're not rewarded twice as much. Five, ten, twenty years from now, when the trend that has been visible in the data since the 1970s is complete, and your labor has no value at all, are you going to be okay? The people who spent large majorities of their income accumulating scarce stores of value (gold, bitcoin, housing, profitable businesses, land, etc) are going to be fine.
  - lern_too_spel 1y ago
    And beanie babies, right? Speculative bubbles like Bitcoin grow until there are no more greater fools to pay off the people at the top of the pyramid. Then as people realize they can't fool someone else to buy their beanie baby for more than what they paid for it, the price quickly drops to 0. Bitcoin has the added benefit that North Korea can take it from you without getting access to your closet.
    - anonym29 1y ago
      I'll keep taking bitcoin, gold, land, housing. You can have my worthless paper federal reserve notes - they're all forged. Unlimited supply cap, the issuing entity literally just keeps printing trillions of them. It's monopoly money. I have no interest in that toilet paper with pictures of dead presidents the federal reserve keeps printing for 100,000% markup. Just because everyone around me is jumping off a cliff with a parachute made of federal reserve notes doesn't mean I'm obligated to do the same.
      - lern_too_spel 1y ago
        You're mixing up completely different assets. Gold and land are scarce resources that have value that goes up when more people need it. The buildings on top of the land depreciate. Bitcoin is just a beanie baby that is easier to steal without recourse that you can't even sell for the materials used to produce it. The thing with a speculative bubble is that as soon as the value stops going up, there is no reason anyone would want to buy it instead of shares in a company or land producing valuable goods and services, so people will sell it off. There is no floor on Bitcoin, so it will go to 0 when that happens. You don't want to be the last fool holding.
- lta 1y ago
  It's also very practical to allow open air corruption of highest level government elected officials.
fragmede 1y ago
The whole supply chain, in fact. The project's site isn't necessarily the real one. the GitHub repo it links to isn't necessarily the real one, the binaries it offers to download aren't necessarily the real one, GitHub isn't even necessarily the real one! There's currently a phishing copy of GitHub up at hxxps://git.hubp.de/ that somebody is going to fall for before it's taken down. If you want to be help get it blocked, load that site up and flag it as unsafe in Chrome! (It's hilarious that the site has a Cloudflare challenge to get in, btw.) It's a big bad dark scary Internet out there. Be careful.
bsder 1y ago
Let's all thank Bitcoin for making supply chain compromises worth anonymous money transfers.

by _zagj 1y ago

oofbey 1y ago

[flagged]

_zagj 1y ago
You could argue that if not crypto, it would have been something else eventually, and that the heightened vigilance it has necessitated has made it more difficult for other motivated attackers (like state actors) to backdoor or compromise OSS. But as someone who doesn't use crypto, I completely get the "f*ck crypto" sentiment.
- brokensegue 1y ago
  stealing other data is less lucrative. i'm not confident someone could empty my bank account even with my username/password
  - anonym29 1y ago
    other data is less lucrative than the $0 sitting in those static attacker wallets?
    - brokensegue 1y ago
      i think you're comparing apples and oranges. that they have so far failed to steal any coins does not mean anything with regards to this discussion
      - anonym29 1y ago
        I don't know how familiar you are with the sheer scope of malware, black markets, data theft, various extortion techniques, but gaining the ability to drop an arbitrary .exe on Xubuntu.org and actually direct enough traffic to it that people notice it is worth a LOT more than $0.
anonym29 1y ago
The value of your labor is being systemically destroyed through deliberate currency manipulation by the US Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the US Government and US Treasury. You are more than twice as productive as your equivalent 1971 counterpart, but relative to inflation, he was being paid about the same as you. You make your employer twice as much money as he did but you're not rewarded twice as much. Five, ten, twenty years from now, when the trend that has been visible in the data since the 1970s is complete, and your labor has no value at all, are you going to be okay? The people who spent large majorities of their income accumulating scarce stores of value (gold, bitcoin, housing, profitable businesses, land, etc) are going to be fine.
- lern_too_spel 1y ago
  And beanie babies, right? Speculative bubbles like Bitcoin grow until there are no more greater fools to pay off the people at the top of the pyramid. Then as people realize they can't fool someone else to buy their beanie baby for more than what they paid for it, the price quickly drops to 0. Bitcoin has the added benefit that North Korea can take it from you without getting access to your closet.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    I'll keep taking bitcoin, gold, land, housing. You can have my worthless paper federal reserve notes - they're all forged. Unlimited supply cap, the issuing entity literally just keeps printing trillions of them. It's monopoly money. I have no interest in that toilet paper with pictures of dead presidents the federal reserve keeps printing for 100,000% markup. Just because everyone around me is jumping off a cliff with a parachute made of federal reserve notes doesn't mean I'm obligated to do the same.
    - lern_too_spel 1y ago
      You're mixing up completely different assets. Gold and land are scarce resources that have value that goes up when more people need it. The buildings on top of the land depreciate. Bitcoin is just a beanie baby that is easier to steal without recourse that you can't even sell for the materials used to produce it. The thing with a speculative bubble is that as soon as the value stops going up, there is no reason anyone would want to buy it instead of shares in a company or land producing valuable goods and services, so people will sell it off. There is no floor on Bitcoin, so it will go to 0 when that happens. You don't want to be the last fool holding.
lta 1y ago
It's also very practical to allow open air corruption of highest level government elected officials.

fragmede 1y ago

The whole supply chain, in fact. The project's site isn't necessarily the real one. the GitHub repo it links to isn't necessarily the real one, the binaries it offers to download aren't necessarily the real one, GitHub isn't even necessarily the real one! There's currently a phishing copy of GitHub up at hxxps://git.hubp.de/ that somebody is going to fall for before it's taken down. If you want to be help get it blocked, load that site up and flag it as unsafe in Chrome! (It's hilarious that the site has a Cloudflare challenge to get in, btw.) It's a big bad dark scary Internet out there. Be careful.

bsder 1y ago

Let's all thank Bitcoin for making supply chain compromises worth anonymous money transfers.