Pup Biru

then you have to pay for it though

i’ll add a concrete example to this… i’ve described a startup i built in another comment but TLDR:

compliance obligations when protecting kids from sexual predators are difficult to prove: sexual abuse usually comes out 30 years later, so standard record keeping is pretty fraught… companies (like the company monitoring compliance - our startup for example) might not exists any more, paper gets lost, database formats become difficult or impossible to read

writing signed proof of compliance to the blockchain is a way of ensuring that an organisation was doing what they could at the time… how this is achieved is tricky for anyone but the source of record, but with blockchain it’s possible (described in the post)

alternatively, instead of having the military have these capabilities perhaps fund non-military departments to do it

it’s a function of the US military being bloated that they can use some of that bloat to do other things, but it’s far from efficient

“creamy” is a pretty common positive attribute for ice cream

depends if the platform has read receipts

the grift shop

I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere.

i think this is true no matter what: nz and germany are both more proportional systems and similarly people dislike politics

it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).

absolutely… some problems are incredibly tricky: getting people to vote against their interests (eg with housing, any effort to reduce house prices directly decreases the value of peoples assets - perhaps not investments, but their primary home even)

how to achieve some societal good things is really tricky in any democracy i think

We can still hope the playing field will tilt back to level.

they’ve been doing this for years… it ain’t gonna happen. it’s not a symptom of trump: texas used to be a muuuuch more purple state, but these days it’s only ever thought of as a republican stronghold not because of their vote, but because of gerrymandering… that’s how long it’s been going on. most people can’t even remember a time when it was any different

For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important.

yeah it’s pretty fucked… in australia, this is a sure way to trigger a dissolved parliament and an early election: there are only 3 things that can happen (and the government shutting down isn’t 1 of them)

• the government resigns and the governor general (technically “the crowns representative in australia”, but in actuality they do very little unless there’s a crisis) appoints (probably) the leader of the opposition
• of budget bills fail 3 times the government may request a double dissolution - early, full federal elections
• the governor general unilaterally dismisses the PM, because if they government can’t even maintain supply then they don’t have the power to do anything at all (this has only ever happened once and was australia’s largest ever constitutional crisis, but i do like that it’s a valid fall-back)

yup, so it’s different with RCV and representative: in australia we have this, where we still have a mostly 2 party system that’s representative but we have RCV, so you can preference other parties first, and still have your vote eventually flow to the major party of your choice

in this case, perhaps enough votes are lost that they loose a seat (we’ve had at least 1 green rep in parliament for a few elections in a row)

also we track “primary vote” - the number of people who ranked you #1 - as an important election metric with real consequences… there are limits to private donations for elections, and a significant portion of funding for elections comes from the government itself. any party that gets over 4% of the primary vote is eligible to claim a proportional amount of financing for next election… so you can punish them in a way that really matters without actually putting anything real on the line

that’s different to proportional representation, because it’s a property of the system that there are many minor parties which inherently means parties have to make more deals

playing by the rules only makes sense when the other side does too… a level playing field is more important than some unspoken rules

yes, everyone agrees it should be impossible to gerrymander… but given that it’s not, for an election to be anywhere near “fair” (and to be clear it can’t when you’re gerrymandering) then both sides must do it otherwise it’s the most unfair thing possible

(disclaimer: aussie; this ain’t my country, and our electoral system doesn’t allow this… but for absolute fucks sake yall your vote effects the entire world and we get no say at all, so all we can do is talk some sense into this UNIQUELY crazy bullshit)

i did a big ol post here about this

generally what you’re talking about is proportional representation… systems like this tend to lead to a government comprised of a lot of minor parties, which sounds great!

but it has its down sides (and i’m not saying 2 party is much better, but it’s useful to be aware of the situations it creates): when there are a lot of minor parties with no clear “above 50%” majority, they have to form a coalition government and that can be extremely fragile

you can’t hold parties to election promises, because you just don’t know what they’re going to have to give up to form a coalition, and even if they do end up forming a coalition you really don’t know how stable that coalition is going to be!

i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right? may as well at least have gridlock with parties blocking legislation based on things you believe in… buuuuuuut that’s probably a bad example: first past the post is far more to blame in that case than proportional vs representative democracy

(fptp leads to extremism, ranked choice etc leads to moderation because people’s 2nd, 3rd, etc choice matters: you want to be likeable not just to your “base” but to everyone, because everyone’s vote has a chance of flowing through to you even if you’re not their first choice… if people hate you, you’re not going to get those preference votes when candidates get eliminated)

that’s absolutely the main thing yup… in almost every circumstance where people implement blockchain, a trusted entity is involved so there’s no point to the blockchain

almost always there’s a single entity issuing a thing, and then that same entity also consuming that thing

we are absolutely right now in the trough of disillusionment with blockchain (well, among people who actually understand anything at all - as usual let’s not count trump and his base as rational actors), and at some point there will be useful solutions remain

(and side note too, we’re in the peak of inflated expectations with AI… i can not wait for that crash and to be left only with useful things)

i’ll give it a crack

in australia, we have various credentials provided by the government to attest to a persons fitness to work with children (i’ll just refer to these in bulk from now on as WWCC: working with children checks). there are many of these - one per state for individuals, plus teacher’s accreditations per state, and a few more. they’re ongoing certifications, so can be revoked if anything happens

it’s a legal requirement for businesses who engage in activities involving kids to ensure anyone they employ - including volunteers - is appropriately vetted

needless to say, this gets quite complex for national organisations!

i was the engineering lead for a startup that organisations could add their workforce into the system, with the credentials, and the system checked periodically to check that everyone’s credentials are valid, about to expire, etc and notify people if something goes awry

of course, that doesn’t need blockchain BUT

in cases of child sexual abuse, things tend to only come out after 30+ years on average (according to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse). organisations need to be able to prove that they were doing everything they possibly could to protect the kids under their care. 30 years on that’s no small task! our company might not even exist in 30 years!

along with our automated checks, we also published an event to the eth blockchain: a hash of the card details as an index (ie if you know the card details, you can look up all instances of validation), and a hash that proves the check took place

what’s that hash? well, i won’t get too into the weeds but essentially we push a payload to IPFS which contains:

• a link to a kind of “template” of an HTTP archive for a typical request to the validation service
• a diff that allows you to reconstruct the HTTP archive of this instance of the request given the original template
• various pieces of the HTTPS handshake with the validation service that allow you to essentially validate after the fact that the content of the HTTP archive was exactly what the validation service sent at the time - HTTPS is essentially signed information after all, so we have a chunk of HTML attesting to the validity of a card that’s been signed by the government! cryptographic proof - not just “take my word for it”

we also published a page on IPFS that allows people to enter card details and load all this information and produce all the technical details to prove what happened (we also had plans for some kind of hardware pack with pinned versions of things because browsers and technology change)

you might be able to do this by relying on the date header that the server sends, but to be really sure, writing the hashes to the blockchain proves that the event given happened at a very specific time and date

blockchain shouldn’t be big and flashy: it’s a very niche use-case, but for those niches there’s really nothing like it

it does still hold value, but the value is super niche and generally shouldn’t be exposed to the user… it’s an implementation detail

a diet that doesn’t include killing animals at all is objectively better.

assuming animals wouldn’t be killed either way, yes… but even if they’re killed for other livestock, that’s going to continue regardless of eating them or not so the difference is practically nothing. you have to reduce the other livestock before any effect on kangaroos is felt

and also, something is better than nothing… i think convincing a majority of people to not eat meat just isn’t realistic. subbing out beef for roo (and chicken and pork) is a very easy trade, and i’ve switched a lot of people to do the same. it’s pretty easy to convince people to do that. it’s very difficult to convince people to eat exclusively vegetarian

i heard about that… it’s wild lol… and their argument is basically “it’s cute”

i’ve heard it does taste like that yes, but haven’t tried myself because idk where to get venison in aus! roo is literally available in mince, diced, steaks, sausages, etc in supermarkets here :p

how’d you compare 'roo to beef in texture and taste

it’s pretty gamey, so i wouldn’t say it’s a direct replacement… i do like a roo bolognese though: adds a bunch of depth

imo roo steak is absolutely amazing though

it’s very low fat, so you have to cook it fast and not well done etc otherwise it gets really tough really quickly

oh also roo curries are incredible too!

i’ve heard that roo it pretty close to venison in taste, but haven’t tried venison so not sure

i’ve replaced beef in my diet with kangaroo for exactly this reason… it’s not the same, but it’s great in its own right and contains a load of iron. makes cutting beef out much easier

bonus: roo populations have to be managed otherwise in modern australia they tend to multiply uncontrolled and it’s a problem, so it’s either eat the meat or waste it… roo meat isn’t farmed