System for generic, decentralized, unstoppable Internet anonymity - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/phantom/ Time for a new, (even more) decentralized, anonymous internet compatible with what we have now, yet independent of it? Phantom aims to build something like this. <comment><USER2> There is already Freenet which had/has similar ambitions.

The problem with this stuff is that immediately tossing all the possible anonymity features onto to your app makes it so utterly seperate from the net that you can't get a critical of mass interest (and your speed really bogs- down but that is secondary/solvable).

What I'd like to see instead is something like an escalating series of counter-measures that each user can trigger at the point they're cut-off from "ordinary" communication - alternative dns _when_ regular dns is messed-with, alternative pipes _when_ they start filtering ordinary sockets, etc.

But make it one app that initially does simple for the user so it get widespread but with the proviso that the apps would do enough discovery that you could "go stealth" when the time came - and have the apps be doing discovery in the meantime.

Attaching MAFIA-Fire to a "social sharing" app like "tribler" <http://www.tribler.org/trac> seems like a start.

<comment><USER3> So you could have tiered networks of increasing anonymity?

All levels of stealth would be able to be active, but what levels you decide to enable determines which secure network you are on.

<comment><USER2> Yes, Tiered networking could have a network-effect that jumping suddenly to maximum security couldn't.

Plus you could deploy an app like this in a place like China to immediately get interest/users...

If Google's serious opposing the DNS crocking, _they_ could do something like this now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whitepaper is an interesting read. The "large data throughput" bullet- point is justified by the claim that no intermediary forwarding node has any idea whether it's talking to another intermediary node or the one of the actual endpoints. So once you have a buzzing network of anonymized nodes with large volumes of anonymous traffic, you can open up a direct connection to your buddy and transfer at high speed. Later, you can claim with "reasonable doubt" that you couldn't have possibly known whether or not they were a forwarding node or an endpoint in that conversation. (You can also claim that you didn't know whether or not YOU were a forwarding node!) This seems reasonable to me so long as you're transferring at a rate comparable to the average throughput, though I'm not sure how you could determine that.

Well, I'm not really familiar with this sort of distributed scheme, so that might be old hat, insanely insecure, or what have you.

<comment><USER5> The reasonable doubt would be easily almost-certainly disproved by an ISP watching both nodes, though - the high-throughput is partially achieved by not delaying data / sending junk data, so it's reasonably certain that a high degree of data transfer between two nodes without any high transfer _out_ of either to unknown nodes represents a direct connection.

If they're both actively sending data out to other nodes, you're _more_ protected, but odds are you won't be giving the network as much bandwidth as your buddy, much less significantly enough to hide your communication in the noise.

If your messages are small, yeah, you're lost in the noise and completely deniable. Which is an interesting advantage.

<comment><USER3> I think it would work to saturate your allocated upload bandwidth and any data sent would be a combination of sources to constantly have a bunch of anonymous random source data.

Anytime you are not actively sending something yourself, it would still saturate the uploads with other people's data.

Then the question remains, "What did you send to that guy?"

I do not think it would ever allow a direct full transfer. But hopping between a dozen or so users with each serving as dual node types would be enough, particularly if all are within the same ISP network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> skip the wiki page, here is the DEFCON presentation in quickview:

[http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mQa724u3AvoJ:w...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mQa724u3AvoJ:www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom- pres.ppt+http://www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom- pres.ppt&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjt9G32WUnrBL6vS3UZaAPjY5msc8c9glTJJh9XK- fExuQ66q9GdTsvFJCnILVtogQLEgcoDnRuH4N75KKHQiuB8RUruEUhTmC_HMayqJwicERFQTUmDHmjVkEgXUOILPOYDXS4&sig=AHIEtbTwsWIRK2lnMiS-8SZW0VlWj8l-jg)

and the whitepaper:

[http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uWb7WlywH9gJ:w...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uWb7WlywH9gJ:www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom- design-paper.pdf+http://www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom-design- paper.pdf&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShTZta27bvicinF74-FB- FvwHZp0ZMYzTVe4QGTXvBHkMObo- uoxYiFhnlDyCQnuanLZ0avF8ubNpzQGQlb3aYCZVOLuufQwrMD- bwsP66tFkcUjt5hr3o_8dKwmmEi9wbuaOKS&sig=AHIEtbQVwy6TpDhdKxvCzCW8aU5PmpMKWw)

</comment><comment><USER7> Might work for piracy but unfortunately it looks like they punted on issues that would help use by activists. Design assumption #1 (white paper section 3.1): "The traffic of every node in the network is assumed to be eavesdropped on (individually, but not globally in a fully correlated fashion) by an external party."

A state-level adversary can instrument their major ISPs, put a bunch of nodes on the network, push traffic through the network and do analyze the resulting traffic. Once they figure out who they want to question it's pretty simple, the mere presence of the software on your computer would be incriminating.

I think right now social networking sites are the best game in town because they have legitimate non-activist uses so they won't automatically get you in trouble. To improve on them resistance to traffic analysis and on-client footprint both need to be dealt with or the tool needs to be really popular for some innocuous application.

It is a really interesting set of problems though.

<comment><USER8> The reason they punted on defeating the global-traffic-analysis adversary is that that's, well, really hard. The projects that are requiring themselves to solve that problem before releasing their first version are still in stealth mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One important difference of Phantom from systems like Tor is that it doesn't seek primarily to be an anonymous way to access the Internet, but to be an anonymized network separate from the Internet. You can do this with Tor as well, but that was never really the emphasis.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think he should change the name before it gets any kind of mainstream adoption...or maybe way before that. It's bad enough that such properties imply usage by the "evil-doers". You shouldn't give it a name that _sounds_ like it's something used by evil-doers, too, which might actually be the worst part. Politicians never bother to learn about something in-depth anyway. All it matters is if it sounds bad or good, then they'll vote for it or against it.

<comment><USER11> This is an important concept. If such a system did gain widespread adoption, the government would certainly take steps against it.

In the 60s the Diggers/Yippie type group <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAW/MF> chose their name very aware that it would not be able to be written in print. They knew that they would not be controlling the message in the coverage of their group in the traditional media and so they attempted to embed a message in their name itself.

Likewise, rather than call this scheme Phantom, it might be wiser to name it after a member of the old <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_correspondence> for embedded patriotism and appeal to authority type connotation. Perhaps "Jefferson". In this way, if the government were to target the protocol, they would have to take questions from the press as to why they were targeting JeffersonNet, etc.

<comment><USER10> You have a good point about giving it a positive connotation like that, but a name like Jefferson would be cumbersome, too. Perhaps something like SafeNet. Just think about it, even when someone would hear something like that they'd be intrigued.

"Oh? Safenet?Is it like a safer Internet? Interesting. Where do I find it?"

Plus, you could almost see what the news headlines would be like: "Government tries to take down the Safenet". "Government wants to make Safenet illegal", "Why the Government doesn't want you to be Safe online", "What's so wrong about wanting to be safe online?" etc

Pretty much anyway you'd spin it, it would make the Government the bad guy. Why do you think RIAA names bills like "Protect IP", which is about censoring the Internet, or Homeland security wanted to make the SHIELD law, which is about catching whistleblowers and such. They named them so anyone who "dares" to go against them would be looked at as the bad guy. "How could you want to stop something like SHIELD as its name??"

Naming is not everything, but it can definitely have a big impact on perception of the general population, which is all that matters in the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The link is pretty scarce on details, basically just a bulleted list of abstract nice-to-haves for a theoretical anonymous network. More detail would be greatly appreciated; users shouldn't have to go into the code to find out how something like this works.

For instance, how is this an improvement over I2P? Phantom should really take a note from I2P's website on what constitutes an adequate amount of exposition to get people to learn about and try your anonymous network.

<comment><USER13> There is a nice white paper and other pdfs in the wiki.

<comment><USER12> I glanced around and didn't see it, even though I loaded the wiki's MainPage. Nonetheless, I don't really have much motivation to download a PDF in the first place, but having done so, I don't have enough motivation to try to read this 58-page white paper just to find out the basics of how this works. They need to write an executive summary and a basic overview of its mechanisms, totaling <= 5 pages tops. It's totally unrealistic to expect people to 1) find your obscure links, 2) download a PDF or other external resource to learn anything about your product, and 3) sit down and read a 58-page white paper as an introduction. If someone is really interested in technical details because they're considering development on the project, or something like that, then this is reasonable, but not for people that you expect to be users.

<comment><USER14> Maybe, just maybe, they don't have an obligation to cater to your expectations of how they must describe their network. Maybe the people they're trying to reach are happy with a white paper. Maybe they're not great writers, designers or marketers and would rather spend their time working on their product.

<comment><USER12> Maybe, and that's fine. I'm just trying to help set expectations and comment generally on why this kind of thing is a bad idea if you want to attract users. Most people are not going to read 58 pages to learn about how this works; that should be obvious even to bad marketers. If they don't care and only want users that cared enough to read the white paper (or were careless enough to use the network with almost no technical detail), that's their prerogative and they're welcome to it. :)

<comment><USER15> The problem is the five-page people tend to be the bike shedders. They don't understand the system well enough to provide good feedback, so start pointing out inconsequential things, causing diversion from getting stuff done.

<comment><USER16> Alternatively, the people who wax lyrical for 60 or so pages don't understand much either, and are compelled to pad out their document.

I remember seeing this a while ago, but I didn't pay much attention to it then, because punishing those who understand the problems with a lengthy verbose soliloquy isn't a good strategy for disseminating information.

:-)

The other problem is that something 60 pages long without any references or citations beyond an occasional casual link to wikipedia, smacks of reinventing the wheel. This would be why he can go for 60 pages without mentioning known terms like "Cybil Attack", or "Onion Routing".

This white paper smells more of bikeshedding - there was no code and right at the bottom of the document, you can see the caveat & apology "This white paper is in no way a complete protocol specification, far from it actually. Its main goal is rather to provide suggestions for solutions for several typical problems [...] which could hopefully work as some kind of reference point for any discussions that may be inspired by it."

I think my favourite part of the paper is where he handwaves PKI & Voting atop of a DHT to 'solve' lots of problems, without realising those are the genuinely hard problems people are still working on.

A close runner-up is in the slides he talks about "no central point of failure" and then explains his "Manual Override Command Support", which is a central point of abuse.

It is nice to see that someone is finally writing code for it, and I wish them luck working out all of the details left out in the paper, especially the organisation and management of addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems like an interesting idea/solution to one of Internet's issues. The challenge however is how do you persuade enough people to start using it? And then the more people use it the more important it becomes and people just won't stop using it.

Facebook is a typical example of how important is to have people adopt a technology. Prior to Facebook was MySpace, yet the former managed to impose and finally replaced the latter because more and more people started using Facebook. With Twitter it's pretty much the same adoption process. Because most people into micro-blogging use it, it is now virtually impossible to come up with another micro-blogging platform that can replace Twitter. And the conversation could go on forever with countless examples.

I'm sure there are so many great ideas out there that get wasted just because people won't start adopting them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can some one explain how this protocol compensates for DNS level blocking ?

<comment><USER19> It uses a DHT-based distributed system as DNS, so there are no root DNS servers that can be got at by attackers. The DNS database is contained in the nodes themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was actually thinking about this a couple hours before I saw this. Crazy. Just not about the anonymity part. One thing I came up with was that instead of a trusted website bootstrapper to show a new node to the swarm, one of the nodes could update a DNS record to point to itself. If that node fails, another node is choosen to update the record.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how this would compare to TeleHash - <http://TeleHash.org>

<comment><AUTHOR> There are very fundamental differences, but this stuff is interesting for very different things, sot thanks for sharing the link! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As submitted here more than 2 months ago when he (Magnus) released the protocol and paper originally: <http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336429>

</comment><comment><USER10> Could this be combined with a P2P mesh network like <http://www.mondonet.org> and also work from mobile phones? They seem to have similar goals.

</comment><comment><USER23> white-paper describing the protocol (from the wiki)

[http://www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom-design- paper.pd...](http://www.magnusbrading.com/phantom/phantom-design-paper.pdf)

<comment><USER17> A lot more easy to follow IMO is the powerpoint presentation

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not a technical point, but—

Anonymity/privacy software written by a bunch of people with gmail addresses? Does that strike anyone else as weird?

<comment><USER25> Not when it comes to security abroad. Some Google people were deeply involved in aiding the Egyptian revolution.

Can't speak for their domestic philosophy, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Off topic:

What did happen to the torrent anonymity proxies, that was in the media a year or two ago? Are they used, but not discussed in the media?

<comment><USER27> They are still doing good business all over the world. American proxies are popular for access to Hulu and Pandora by foreigners and Swedish proxies are popular for bittorrent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the idea, but I won't use it, because I don't think "enough" people will use it.</comment>


Remember to Backup Your Computer at Your Office, at Home, or in a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://theinternetbytes.com/2020/05/23/remember-to-backup-your-computer-at-your-office-at-home-or-in-a-startup/ <comment><AUTHOR> Life happens! With all the disruption and WFHing related to COVID, it's important to remember to back up your workstation even if you're not in the office!</comment>


Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/facebook-libra-and-the-long-game/ <comment><USER2> > The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a > medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two > use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the > world.

Well that's certainly an understatement.

This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating there are no banks in the coalition.

Banks and governments go together like peas and carrots, they also control pretty much everything and have for hundreds and thousands of years. This control is derived from a few places, but primarily from a monopoly on the control of the currency and the monopoly on coercive force.

No government is going to let FB and any coalition do an end run around their national currency and their banking institutions. They're also not going to partner with an international consortium to have them replaced with something they only partially control.

I really don't know why this isn't a larger part of this conversation. I think people need to be cracking more history books and less William Gibson and Neil Stephenson novels.

<comment><USER3> >I really don't know why this isn't a larger part of this conversation.

That's been the elephant in the room ever since Satoshi published its paper more than a decade ago. When I discuss with cryptocurrency enthusiasts I often get the impression that they think that banks are this kind of useless parasite body that somehow appears like mosquitoes around a pond in summer. That they only serve to basically operate ATMs, send you your Visa card and crash the market every other decade or so.

This is of course a gross misunderstanding of what banks are, what they do, why they do it and where they come from. In particular the idea that "bitcoin is going to kill banks" (a very common sentiment in my experience in cryptocurrency circles) is about as meaningful as "this new type of snowboard is going to kill ski resorts!". No it won't, it might change some things about how they operate but after the transition period it'll be business as usual. Cryptocurrencies don't come even close to replacing most of the services offered by banks. Actually, they don't even come close to replacing most of the services offered by actual currency.

It's this weird cognitive dissonance that you encounter in conspiracy theory circles: the banking system is this hellish beast that steals money from the honest middle-class worker, operated from a global circle of elites acting from the shadows and that must be destroyed at all cost to save humanity. How do you do that? By replacing their currency by your own, they'll never see that coming, those idiots.

<comment><USER4> This is one of the reasons I dropped out of crypto for years, most of its supporters were completely delusional and tragically uninformed about actual banks.

I always considered two datapoints to be fulcral A) ease of use, which Bitcoin has never had and B) potential to be overtaken by an actual bank and twisted into whatever purposes it wanted due to the 51% error. That is, how hard would be it for JPMorgan or Deustche Bank to just buy 51% of Bitcoin and make it do whatever they wanted? I could never see the potential for either fact to be avoided, as much as the frothing Bitcoin-enthusiasts would like it to.

<comment><USER5> _> This is one of the reasons I dropped out of crypto for years, most of its supporters were completely delusional and tragically uninformed about actual banks._

The reason I stayed in is because Bitcoin solved a seemingly intractable problem, it works in the real world, and it's survived and even thrived in the face of fierce attacks for a decade.

Yes, there are many shills who are delusional and ignorant. Yes, speculators and fraudsters are running wild.

None of that changes the fundamental characteristics that make this a fascinating and promising technology, network and social movement.

<comment><USER6> > and it's survived and even thrived in the face of fierce attacks for a > decade

What fierce attacks has bitcoin faced?

Sure, lots of people mock and criticize it, but no real action has been taken. The people criticizing it have just as much influence (or maybe even less) than the delusional and ignorant true believers.

To me, a fierce attack would be regulatory action taken by various world governments, but that hasn't happened. To the contrary, even countries that probably should care (e.g. China, with its capital controls, and bitcoin mining seemingly used to evade them) appear not to. If anything, that shows just how insignificant bitcoin is.

My vague impression (I don't follow this closely) of US regulators is that they have given bitcoin reasonable or even slightly favorable treatment.

<comment><USER7> >>Sure, lots of people mock and criticize it,

Bitcoin and crypto only survive because of trust. There was a time, especially on Bloomberg, when the news was constantly criticising it and sowing mistrust. "It's only used by hackers" or "hit men are murdering people for crypto on the dark web" or "terrorist are funding operations with crypto.". So there have been countless efforts to break the core of what makes a currency valuable.

Additionally, Bitcoin specifically is illegal in several countries, China being one of them. The US has also seized several piles of bitcoin and like they do with other seized assets they put it up for auction. These guys buy the stuff up cheap and immediately sell it. Now that's not a specific attack but it is damaging to prices. Lastly exchanges are requiring photo id to buy things now because of regulation which makes it even harder for people to get into. I can buy bullets and in some cases guns more easily.

So there is actually plenty, not to mention numerous attacks on the network in the early days. Who knows who was behind those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Adding the words blockchain and cryptocurrency to this new Facebook initiative gives it an air of "innovation", the sort that reacts to criticism with "this is too new and innovative for you to understand", and "stogy governments don't like to innovate like we do, so they want to stop us with old timey regulation (and consumer protections)".

Libra is essentially an ETF. It's a vehicle that will take deposits from customers and invest them in interest-yielding securities and currencies. Unlike a bank, customers forfeit their right to gain interest from their deposits and it will instead service operating costs (and any money left over goes to founder members). Libra is effectively planing to receive deposits, manage money and process transactions, despite not even attempting to meet regulatory requirements (though they plan to "shape the regulatory environment"\--their words). What's so innovative about this venture is its potential for further data harvesting and potential income streams. Facebook isn't going to harvest any data produced from this venture--that is unless the customer willingly gives it to them. Why would a customer willingly provide this access to Facebook? I think anyone using FB for the past decade can answer that question--those regular TOS updates are hard to follow.

Libra isn't so much a subversion of the existing order, as it as an act of financial engineering to service a social media company. What it "could be" doesn't justify what it already is.

<comment><USER9> > Libra is essentially an ETF

But what they invest in will be interesting: what happens when the next financial crisis comes ? When the dollar plunges ?

<comment><USER10> These sorts of "currency" are typically invested in short term, low-risk deposits. Think bank certificates of deposit, US treasuries and the equivalents in foreign currencies.

<comment><USER11> The buck still broke in 2008; that's what started the crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't help but think that Facebook doomed this "distributed ledger" possibility by trying to be first to market with a tarnished brand.

The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China.

I can't imagine the possibility for prosperity when 3 billion consumers enter the global economy in a matter of years.

Alternative currencies were always going to have to compete (or at least deal with) with powerful governments, and all the most powerful governments are most easily manipulated by appealing to a mass audience.

The Facebook brand isn't capable of doing that right now. There's far more incentive for politicians to talk about breaking Facebook up than to encourage Facebook to embed itself in the financial lives of their constituents.

If a decision is made to breakup Facebook, spinning off Libra will be right at the top of the list. I can't see how it survives as a stand-alone technology without the support of Facebook's network effects.

<comment><USER13> > The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that > can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this > with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China.

I hear this a lot in cryptocurrency threads, and I vehemently disagree. There's no doubt that using "some other currency" (currency or cryptocurrency) is better than using a corrupt, authoritarian regime's currency. But there's also no doubt that being able to execute monetary policy is a huge advantage for any country. Read anything about currency manipulation or currency markets. Not being able to control the supply of currency your goods (or others' goods, i.e. petrodollars) are valued in is a huge disadvantage.

It feels like there's a huge political push to try and get the "developing world" (with all the hand-waving that's been applied to this term) onto cryptocurrencies, but that permanently puts them at a disadvantage compared to countries that can manipulate their own currency. I think selling this is short-term-ism at its worst.

And honestly? It's also vaguely colonial. I would love to hear from people in these countries what they think about cryptocurrencies, if anything. Cryptocurrency advocates saying, "we know what's best for you" is super troubling to me.

<comment><USER14> Regarding a country's ability to manipulate their own currency or execute monetary policy which is mostly in the direction of printing more: the end game of crypto seems to take this option off the table for all governments in the long term.

Why? Because assuming all other things being equal (convenience as medium of exchange etc.), an individual is always going to prefer holding currency that isn't subject to inflation.

An individual is never going to generously allow their government to erode X% of their liquid cash voluntarily.

This future doesn't require any crypto 'dictating' its money supply policy, it just requires at least one fixed supply crypto to exist in your country that is as convenient as existing cash / online payment to make governmental monetary policy useless.

The problem for governments is: the genie is out of the bottle regarding fixed supply.

Note that I'm not saying it's good or bad that countries cannot effectively control money supply anymore but it seems inevitable they can't in the long term.

<comment><USER4> Governments can easily ban and pursue anti-crypto measures to prevent anything such as money they can't control.

Yannis Varoufakis said it best: the idea of apolitical money is a fiction and a dream. Money has always been associated to and controlled by governments. Bitcoin currently is actually heavily manipulated/moved by Tether which is controlled by Bitfinex.

<comment><USER14> I agree governments will try to ban fixed supply currencies but I don't believe they will succeed.

China still can't stop its citizens accessing the open internet on VPN. North Korea still can't stop its citizens smuggling wikipedia into the country on USB sticks. Governments won't be able to stop citizens storing their wealth in fixed supply currencies.

> Bitcoin currently is actually heavily manipulated/moved by Tether

[citation needed]

<comment><USER4> It was an article on hacker news. I cba to find it but will link if I do. Of course it's important to provide sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm crossing my fingers that this pseudo crypto money never takes off. Having Facebook control this would be so terrible and the proof that we didn't learn anything over the last couple months. Don't fool yourself even though they released a white paper and some pseudo decentralized schemes this is no different than a casino chip.

Unfortunately I feel like it might pick up and become a thing.

<comment><USER16> The article specifically says that FB does not have a controlling interest or the ability to decide who joins the consortium.

<comment><USER15> That's the way they marketed it. They know they had to do this little concession in order to get Libra to pick up so that people would repeat tirelessly that it's not controller by Facebook and therefore it's good.

But it's controlled by Facebook and friends and the influence they would get over any decision is absolutely huge

<comment><USER16> Do you have any citations that contradict the article?

 _The Validators Who, then, are the validators? Well, Facebook is one, but only one: currently there are 28 "Founding Members", including merchants, venture capitalists, and payment networks, that meet two of the following three criteria:

More than $1 billion USD in market value or more than $500 million USD in customer cash flow Reach more than 20 million people a year Recognition as a top-100 industry leader by a third-party association such as Fortune or S&P These "Founding Members" are required to make a minimum investment of $10 million and provide computing power to the network. In addition, there are separate requirements for non-profit organizations and academic institutions that rely on a mixture of budget, track record, and rankings; a minimum investment may not be necessary. Libra intends to have 100 Founding Members by the time it launches next year._

<comment><USER15> They are the ones selecting the "members" and they will have a huge influence on any updates or any controversial topic or potential fork.

Don't fool yourself, this whole thing has been carefully orchestrated to look like if it was an open community but it is very tightly controlled by Facebook and friends.

I will not touch this with a 100 foot pole.

<comment><USER16> Again, that's not what the article says. They have clear list for what the membership requirements are and all of those requirements are administered by a third party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Which, by extension, means that Facebook will not control Libra."

And, if you believe that, I have a fine bridge in New York I'll sell you for a few Bitcoin.

<comment><USER18> What's the counterargument to this?

<comment><USER3> The incentives don't seem to align in that direction. What would be the point for Facebook to create a promote such a currency if they can't control it at some level?

I fully expect that even _if_ the core of the cryptocurrency _might_ actually be decentralized and not directly controlled by Facebook (and I don't believe that either, for the record) the practical implementation of this will give Facebook more than enough weight to shut anybody down if they so desire. A bit like how email is supposed to be decentralized but if these days gmail decides it doesn't want to play with you you're effectively screwed.

Facebook (and other tech giants) have absolutely nothing to gain from decentralization and privacy when their entire trillion dollar business model relies on siphoning as much data as possible. Anybody thinking that Facebook is somehow going to usher the golden age of cryptolibertarianism and the decentralization of money is frankly shortsighted. Then again, shortsightedness is a common symptom of libertarianism (or is it the other way around?).

<comment><USER18> But given the system laid out in the white paper, what specifically gives Facebook the ability to exert this kind of control, even in the long run?

I think we all agree that Facebook is incentivized to behave in certain ways, but if self-limitation is baked into the system, how does that matter?

This is a genuine question for which I would love an answer.

<comment><USER19> The white paper explicitly gives the Libra Association (i.e. Facebook and its partner validators) governance control over the cryptocurrency.

Here's an easy scenario to imagine that shows how incentives would get misaligned: Facebook and the other validating nodes of Libra are financially compensated by interest from the collateral for Libra tokens. If Libra is successful in its mission, it will become a global currency that's stronger than the assets that underly its collateral.

When this happens, suddenly Libra being a collateralized stablecoin stops making sense. Kind of like when the US Dollar no longer needed to be backed by gold since it was a strong enough currency/unit of financial measurement on its own. The US then got rid of the gold standard and has since saved itself untold money in custodial expenses they would have been paying to hold all that gold.

The Association would never do this for the Libra however since it is literally how they are funding their own operation. Even if it's in the best interest of all Libra users, the centralized governance association with all of the authority to make this improvement would choose not to because it's not in their best interest to do so.

There's no leap of imagination there - it's just how power and incentives work.

<comment><USER18> Seems to be an excellent breakdown of how the _Libra Association_ (of which Facebook is an equal among many) would control Libra, but not Facebook alone.

I think the strongest argument towards the latter is the long-run aggregation theory one re: Calibra owning the most Libra _users_ , and not having to own the underlying Libra system itself.

<comment><USER19> Correct, my issues with Libra's centralization has to do with the Association, not Facebook alone. I see what you're saying though where Calibra could itself be used used as leverage by Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a totally out of the box thought here.

I think Libra is a distraction from Facebook for people to forget Cambridge Analytica etc. FB may have unleashed this as a weapon for people to rally up or againast and Fb doesn't care if it succeeds or fails because it is a new category and doesn't affect it's bottomline.

<comment><USER21> facebook.com's s bottom line is in exponential decay since a few years. They are trying to find a future here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My primary concern is that with a set of 20 or 100 validators, you can't call it a decentralized platform (it's a blockchain run exclusively by a centralized consortium). The article discusses the fact they intend to to decentralize it in 5 years, but that would be the equivalent of a dictator stepping down and promoting democracy which... doesn't always come to pass.

<comment><USER23> I've been wondering about this too. I don't see how the incentives are setup that the Association would want to move towards an entirely permissionless network. Especially if Libra gets heavily adopted at 100 nodes (as they don't need to improve trust at that point and letting more companies into the association will decrease transaction throughput).

<comment><USER24> There are also some technical barriers on the path to a permissionless network. The consensus algorithm Libra is using currently requires full connectivity between validators and is only robust so long as 2/3 of the validators can be trusted. Much has been made of the risk of a "51% attack" against Bitcoin, but one need only control 1/3 of the validator _nodes_ to disrupt Libra, which is a far lower threshold than 51% of _computation capacity_. Your standard botnet isn't much of a threat to Bitcoin since the participating devices aren't optimized for mining, but Libra would be an entirely different matter.

<comment><USER25> The 1/3rd / 2/3rd pattern in a lot of blockchain BFT protocols is really elegant. If 1/3 of the voting power of a chain wants it to stop, then it probably shouldn't be running. It takes 2/3rds of the voting power for the validators to actually steal anyone's money or alter history.

Your botnet example is a non-sequiter. Since power in BFT protocols does not stem from the wasting of electricity, botnets have nothing to do with any possible attacks on a BFT system.

<comment><USER24> On the contrary, botnets are far more of a problem in systems designed to make it cheap to run a validator node. This creates an obvious opportunity for a Sybil attack: spawn a few thousand nodes on other people's insecure IoT devices and you immediately control far more than the requisite 1/3 or 2/3 of the network. It's a lot harder to control 51% of the hash rate for a PoW design like Bitcoin which effectively requires specialized hardware to mine competitively.

I'm assuming they implement countermeasures against simply running a bunch of VMs or containers masquerading as a large number of independent nodes, for example by looking for multiple connections from the same IP addresses or subnet. Otherwise botnets would indeed be unnecessary to carry out the attack—anyone could do it from home with a modest PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article seems to be making the claim that the Libra blockchain will not be viewable by anyone other the validators. This is counterintuitive - even if only validators can confirm new blocks I expected the chain would be public, there would be explorers, etc. Does anyone know if this question has been answered somewhere definitively?

<comment><USER27> [https://librabrowser.io/stats](https://librabrowser.io/stats) already exists for the testnet with real time stats

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A huge amount of person-to-person sales take place through FB marketplace. If FB can drive some % of those people to use Libra that will be a good start to adoption.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am someone you might consider early adopter. I enjoying tinkering with the latest gadget, getting that fancy domain name with an extension like .ooo ( yeah! not kidding :-D ) but .. when it comes to FB, I don't mind being a luddite. Add to that, the country I live in currently (India) has a ban on cryptocurrencies and we have tons of alternatives like Paytm[0] and UPI (Inter-bank transfers in an instant)[1]. So, Mr Zuckerberg et al, thank you but no thank you.

To me , the most interesting part is towards the end of the article (emphasis mine) > This applies even more to the Calibra wallet: Facebook _promises not to mix transaction data with profile data_ , but that entails, well, trust ...

We all know how the promises turn out [2][3]

[0][https://paytm.com/](https://paytm.com/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface)

[2][https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3032946/whatsapp-a...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3032946/whatsapp- and-facebook-are-sharing-user-data-after-all-and-its-legal)

[3][https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2018/05/23/zuckerber...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2018/05/23/zuckerbergs- broken-promises-show-facebook-is-not-your-friend/#359b79477b0a)

</comment><comment><USER30> This article captures one of the biggest problems I've seen in the discussion about Libra, which is that everyone has been writing it off as a currency that Facebook can control. In reality, Facebook's control is limited to being equal to the other members of the Association. Facebook controls the Calibra wallet, _not_ the currency as a whole.

The thing that really drove this point home for me was when I browsed to both websites. Browsing to the Calibra wallet website, the entire site broke because I have blackholed all Facebook and tracking domains through NextDNS. When I browsed to the Libra website to view the whitepaper, everything worked just fine. This is a great demonstration of who is in control of what.

That being said, I think this article also outlines the clear incentives as to why Facebook would like to promote Libra in the first place, which is the data they have the potential to gather through the Calibra wallet.

</comment><comment><USER31> Disappointed Ben didn't add a paragraph or two about privacy concerns. The MC, Visa will float on top of libra unencumbered by bank fees, but our relationship with credit card firms and our privacy is regulated in the western world. The Calibra wallet logic is going to need greater privacy protections for the user or we will have a situation worse than the current platform monopolies, with only pea shooters like the EFF working for users [https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy](https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy) We need new law like the US section 230 for personal rights and privacy as well as free speech [https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230](https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230)

</comment><comment><USER32> What about privacy? Most of these Internet giants make money hoarding user data; will Libra open up a new dataset to collect and monetize for these companies? Will Libra transaction data be more thorough than what they're currently able to get from 3rd parties?

<comment><USER33> No worries, they're just gonna take a pic of your government ID and fingerprints for KYC requirements which are securely isolated in a vault in Switzerland where they will remain 100% safe, except in that rare instance where you need to buy a cup of coffee, and they therefore need to inspect all your records to make sure you're not funding terrorism. /s

<comment><USER34> From the various articles I've seen it looks like they don't think they need to follow KYC because it's not 'real' money.

I'm sure the government will have something to say about that.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, that's really what this is all about- Zuck probably keeps asking stuff "can't we just have a payment button right here in an FB baby shower announcement?" and his legal departments says "you can't do that for lots of regulatory reasons, including KYC" and so Libra was born.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Pretty interesting. It's good to see a deeper analysis of this.

This part though:

> ...while its members — who again, are the validators — do control the Libra > protocol, Facebook does not control the validators. Which, by extension, > means that Facebook will not control Libra.

That's true, but from my point of view, that distinction isn't too important.

In either case, there are a relatively very small number of individuals who control Libra in an opaque way.

By spreading the control out a little, I think it reduces short-sighted and single-perspective thinking, which is good, but it's still going to be run in a self-interested way for the handful of companies that control it and the executives that control those companies.

</comment><comment><USER36> > In practice, it is much more complicated: while a limited set of > "validators" — aka miners — share a history of transactions in (individual) > blocks that are chained together (i.e. a blockchain), what Libra actually > exposes is the current state of the ledger. In practice this means that > adding new transactions can be much quicker and more efficient — more akin > to adding a line to a spreadsheet than rebuilding the entire spreadsheet > from scratch.

The author seems to be referring to the two different accounting models in crupyotcurrency: the coin model and the account model.

The coin (aka UTXO) model mimics physical cash. A transaction changes ownership of a digital token, leaving a chain of ownership in its wake. This is the model used by Bitcoin.

The account model credits and debits specific amounts from an account. This is the model used by Ethereum.

The author seems to imply that the speed of a network depends on which accounting model is being used.

It doesn't. In both cases, signatures must be validated, and this is the most costly computation. In neither case is the entire chain of transactions reloaded to verify a single payment. Instead, the most recent state is extended.

Transaction volume is largely a function of how open the network is and how trusted the parties are that write blocks. The more open the network to membership by arbitrary players, the slower it will be. The less trust in those writing blocks, the slower it will be.

Bitcoin users value censorship resistance and insist on validating their own blocks (or at least they should). The network is configured make this possible by, for example, setting a block size limit among other features.

Libra will need none of this. Validators will be implicitly trusted. What they say goes. A certain minimum hardware spec can be set and enforced, ensuring fast payment processing, at the expense of censorship resistance and openness.

</comment><comment><USER37> I haven't found many "takes" on Libra talk about Calibra, which is FB's Libra wallet and, if this thing takes off, would likely by default be the top wallet for Libra transactions.

Calibra would require full identity verification e.g. submitting SSN and a copy of your picture ID. Getting that info is way beyond what FB has about you now.

</comment><comment><USER38> Do companies that bought in to join the Libra alliances for 10 million each mean that they'll receive all transaction history and purchasing patterns of everyone on the Libra network as well as receive a share of the fees in the future? Sounds like a bargain if that's the case

<comment><USER21> the blockchain only contains wallet addresses, not info about who is buying what. only sites having access to the checkout can know that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Thing with libra is that its not a cryptocurrency nor does it move the distributed agenda forward. It moves transactions from happening off-the platform to being on it.

FB is in it for themselves. The consortium of third party players is for shielding themselves from anti-trust concerns

</comment><comment><USER40> _" while its members — who again, are the validators — do control the Libra protocol, Facebook does not control the validators. Which, by extension, means that Facebook will not control Libra."_

Within the designed protocols, yes, Facebook gets one vote equal to the the single vote of any other node.

Outside the system lens, Facebook brings this product to potentially 2.38 billion users. That dwarfs the value that any other validator can bring.

If Facebook becomes unhappy with what the consortium is doing, it can simply say "Hey, we're gonna stop using Libra, and start a new fork." So while they may not control other validator members, they can certainly strong arm them into falling in line.

</comment><comment><USER41> Forgive my stupidity, but I don't understand this statement by Ben (Stratechery):

"In practice, it is much more complicated: while a limited set of "validators" — aka miners — share a history of transactions in (individual) blocks that are chained together (i.e. a blockchain), what Libra actually exposes is the current state of the ledger. In practice this means that adding new transactions can be much quicker and more efficient — more akin to adding a line to a spreadsheet than rebuilding the entire spreadsheet from scratch."

How is this different than Bitcoin, and why does it require a different level of trust?

You are still trusting the validators (miners) either way, correct? And how is it more efficient?

<comment><USER42> Libra intends to use Proof of Stake. This means that the initial members will "stake" some amount of Libra and now all transactions can only be validated by them. You as an individual can't validate any new transaction. The assumption is that because the PoS validator has a huge stake in this currency, they will behave rationally or otherwise they would devalue their own stake. The trust here is completely centralized and is a rich get richer model. If FB or PayPal or a member doesn't want to add your transaction, they can completely block you. They control what is true.

Bitcoin uses Proof of Work. Consensus is decentralized. Anyone can do some "work" (hashing in this case). If they find the magic number to get the right hash, they get rewarded by the Bitcoin protocol itself. This is also the only way _new_ Bitcoins are created. It is only when one of these magic numbers gets found that transactions get added to the Bitcoin ledger (every 10 minutes). The rule is that the longest ledger chain wins so everyone is running in parallel. You don't need to own any Bitcoin to do mining to get "free" Bitcoin. The trust is decentralized (in terms of control) and no one can prevent anyone else from validating Bitcoin transactions as long as you follow the same rules as everyone else.

<comment><USER41> Probably too late to keep this discussion going, but...

I understand Proof of Stake vs. Proof of Work. But what Ben says about only "publishing the current state of the ledger" doesn't seem to relate to whether PoS is used. It's certainly not inherent to PoS that the entire blockchain isn't published.

Maybe he's just confused about how PoS works (but I somehow doubt that). I understand how PoS makes things more efficient by entrusting a single validator (or any small subset of validators) rather than having essentially a contest, and I understand why this is also inherently less trustworthy than PoW.

But Ben never mentions Proof of Stake anywhere in his explanation, just that the blockchain's "current state" is the only thing "exposed".

I'm juse trying to understand what he's getting at there.

<comment><USER42> Gotcha, I assumed that it was a little handwavy on the details to be more accessible to a wider audience. It is very possible that they don't let others download the complete ledger and only let you ask for a certain private key's current balance. I agree that this is even more concerning (if true) than regular PoS. I also didn't read the proposal deep enough to know if you can register to be a node that sees all proposed transactions even though you can't actually validate them. If there is on way for external monitoring or audit, this truly is not blockchain even in name only. Then it is simply a replicated database with restricted access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Something I haven't seen yet: If my computer has a bit of malware land on it, do I lose my entire wallet worth of Libra irrevocably? If so, this seems pretty questionable as a mass-market money...

<comment><USER44> Maybe we can store libra in some sort of institution that would provide some guarantees, like returning your libra if they get stolen. They could make money by investing the libra they hold and keeping the interest.

<comment><USER45> Yes, that is a novel and brilliant idea.

Since this is something similar to a old school money lenders table over which exchanges took place, we shall adopt the Old Italian word for table, banca, and call it a "bank"!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> A brand new highly technical protocol with a brand new language has been announced along with open-source codebase and I am yet to come across a meaningful critique or review of the tech side of Libra. Politics aside, just the tech is quite interesting.

I think it is silly that they think this will become big among the unbanked (in countries like India) when they can do only 1000 transactions per second. Nuts! Don't you think so?

</comment><comment><USER47> But what about Privacy and Security which we should concern.

</comment><comment><USER48> I dunno.. it's nice and all that these companies support it. But they are exactly the kinds of companies that don't have the best customer service.

</comment><comment><USER49> _Here is the important thing to understand about the Libra Association: while its members — who again, are the validators — do control the Libra protocol, Facebook does not control the validators. Which, by extension, means that Facebook will not control Libra._

But Facebook does control Libra just by virtue of providing infrastructure. They're also part of the consortium. So again, why is the author trying to make it seem like Facebook has no control?

<comment><USER50> It's a kind of mind-trick that only occurs in articles and white papers about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. I've noticed that they often end up proposing a distributed private shared database controlled by a corporate cartel and call it "freedom."

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I too dismissed Libra out of hand, but the coalition that Facebook is building is interesting.

People say that "Fintech threatens the banks" but almost all Fintech companies partner with the banks in one way or another.

Look at the companies involved with Libra and see that none of them are banks.

Libra will still have a lot of money on deposit with the banks, but it might be the first Fintech that will really bypass them.

<comment><USER33> Where is the Visa press release? Where is the Uber CEO interview on Libra?

The Libra membership list is kind of meaningless, given that none of the partners seem to have any interest of promoting the project... mainly Zuck just asked these companies "Hey, you want to be on a list for a tech project for some free PR?" and until we hear more from the partners there's no reason to take this list seriously.

<comment><USER52> It's not entirely free: those companies are paying $10M to run a Libra node. That's still pocket change as a hedge in case it actually takes off.

So maybe they're happy to shut up for now, let Zuck take the regulatory flack, and if it seems like Libra will take off on FB's efforts, they're positioned to benefit from adoption.

<comment><USER33> > those companies are paying $10M to run a Libra node

Please show me a citation of where is says concretely that Visa/Uber/etc have handed $10M to this project. The Libra project so far is just wishful thinking about things that maybe, might possibly happen sometime.

<comment><USER52> What kind of proof do you expect? Even if I somehow had the wire transfer receipt in hand, Facebook could simply be giving Visa and Uber a $10M rebate on their advertisement bill in return. This is not a material sum for these companies when it comes to such a major partnership.

However, since these rules are supposed to apply to everyone who wants a seat at the Libra Association, I do assume that Uber and Visa are paying the fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The missing information here is how much of this currency will belong to facebook, and to each constituent. No matter how many orgs are added to the coalition, if facebook owns 50% of the coin then it's all a sham.

<comment><USER54> Why? Its a convertible coin. It doesn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> one more step towards the irrelevance of democracy and towards increasing corporate control and influence

</comment><comment><USER56> Sounds like a great new way for Russian to buy ads on the sly to interfere with our next elections.

Other than that, I can't think of a use case.

</comment><comment><USER57> Technically what Ethereum, Bitcoin and Libra are doing are each variations of Byzantine Fault Tolerance based consensus. The key difference is that the former two are permission less and the latter is permissive. Permission less in this case means that anyone can start a validator node and verify transactions this typically involves either proof of work or stake. Permissive means that only some validators are able to do that and that the consensus is based on verified identity: each validator has a known identity and only explicitly trusts certain other well known validators.

As the article nodes, it would be a mistake to assume that that is only Facebook. What Libra does is actually similar to Stellar and Ripple, which are also based on permissive BFTs.

Since I've used Stellar, I know a bit more about how that is structured. In short, in Stellar, anyone can start a validator and start validating transactions. This is commonly done by people with a need to validate transactions for scaling reasons. Every validator is configured with a list of other validators that they trust and a consensus quorum that needs to be reached between those for a transaction to be acceptable.

The flip side is that for your transactions to be acceptable to others, they'd have to trust you. In practice these sort of bi-directional trust relations only happen on a need to have basis; for example because you and your business relations are swapping the same tokens with each other and have a business need to trust each other's work. The extended network of mutually trusting validators that trust each other directly or indirectly is the basis for the consensus. After some incidents with the Stellar network halting its consensus, Stellar is actually moving to reduce the reliance of the network on their own validators. The recent outage in May was actually root caused by several non SDF owned validators going down. This sounds bad but it is actually a safety feature: stellar will prefer partition tolerance and consistency over availability. Ethereum and Bitcoin have had issues with favoring availability over consistency. If you are running a bank, that is kind of a big deal.

Libra is launching with a quite broad consortium that each will run validators. I imagine that like in Stellar, each of those validators will eventually be able to start trusting other validators at their own discretion. I'm assuming that that is what Facebook means when they say they will eventually open up.

It seems like initially this will be tied to deals with Calibra, which is a subsidiary of Facebook and which is responsible for hosting the reserve that backs the Libra, and other stable coins that will be running on the network. A key difference with Stellar, which is run and controlled by a foundation representing its members, Calibra is instead a commercial entity owned by Facebook. Presumably the consortium members have some kind of contractual agreement with Calibra about this. In other words, Facebook as a owner of Calibra is a bit more special than everyone else. I imagine they also hold patents, trademarks, etc. as well. To be clear, the software itself is Apache licensed.

Like many, I wrote up my own thoughts on Libra and wrote a lengthty article. You may find it here: [https://dev.to/jillesvangurp/libra-blockchains-and-the- meani...](https://dev.to/jillesvangurp/libra-blockchains-and-the-meaning-of- it-all-1clc)

In short, what they are doing makes sense practically, technically, and legally. People are obviously talking a lot about legislation currently and Facebook's motivations. My impression is that governments are mostly still applying and interpreting existing laws when it comes to blockchains and are actually quite slow in responding in a coherent and timely fashion with new laws. My guess is that Facebook and others are counting on this and are looking to create a financial reality where shutting this down becomes economically more difficult. In short, once they are moving lots of money around, shutting them down becomes impractical.

</comment><comment><USER58> And no mention of Lightning Network...

<comment><USER59> Why would this article mention that?

<comment><USER60> Probably because the author mentioned that Bitcoin is not efficient (7 tx per second). But Lightning Network can make Bitcoin more efficient. I haven't looked into Lightning Network thouroughly so I can not make any comment whether it is up to its words.

<comment><USER61> They didn't mention it because Lightning network is only brought up and pushed by people who have a stake in it. It only scales with transactions, not users, and is still pinned to Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Could the problem with the damaged brand be a reason why Apple is so keen on becoming a "privacy-as-a-service"-company?

<comment><USER16> On one hand it is mostly bull. Apple has the benefit of having a "strategy credit" since selling user data is not part of its business model.

But on the other hand, I can't help but think that a gay CEO who grew up in Alabama _really_ cares about privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Tangential, but has Facebook done anything to reduce the power-consumption in Libra?

I'm not enthused about supporting anything that worsens the global climate crisis and its irresponsible of large companies to support cryptocurrencies with its terrible power usage right now.

<comment><USER64> It doesn't use mining, so requires negligible power to run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> What is the benefit of Libra exactly? Why not just set it up like WeChatPay or Paypal as a centralized database?

I guess like gambling chips or video arcade tokens, the lack of belief that it's real money might confuse some people into spending it more freely.

Another thing is is that they can take all the money that's paid into Libra and run a hedge fund with the reserves because they can write their terms and conditions so they can do whatever the heck they want with the "reserves" and not tell anyone what they're doing.

Another benefit is that they can facilitate illegal commerce on facebook by letting people conduct cross border transactions outside of AML/KYC land that a PayPal like system would require.

They can also tie identities to coin transactions to analyze transactions for further ad targeting.

Did I miss anything?

</comment><comment><USER66> Pink plane reasoning like this makes you dismiss bitcoin as not scalable. The blue idea is to scale off chain with smart contracts whether centralized or not.

Compare cos fighting this to those not like cash app which are building on top of bitcoin.</comment>


NoScript contents are not shown in Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=34964

<comment><USER2> The <noscript> tag was notoriously buggy and iritating cross-browser, so I can see why they wouldn't want to implement it, like the <blink> tag.

If you use something like modernizr, which replaces the "no-js" class on your <html> tag with "js", you can just have a <div> or <p> simulate what <noscript> would have been. Have it "display: none" if the element is a child of "js". (trick courtesy Paul Irish)

For a quick summary/reference: [http://javascript.about.com/od/hintsandtips/a/Html-5-And- Nos...](http://javascript.about.com/od/hintsandtips/a/Html-5-And-Noscript.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this one of the drawbacks of Chrome's insanely quick release schedule? We've seen the benefits, it's not surprising that there are some drawbacks.

I fail to believe that such a fundamental bug would have been in a major Firefox release, although stranger things have happened.

<comment><USER4> From a link in the bug report, it's a WebKit rendering bug that was fixed over half a year ago. Either Chrome's release schedule doesn't include updating WebKit frequently or the fix was incomplete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I keep getting 500 error :(

        Server Error

        The server encountered an error and could not complete your request.
        If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it.

<comment><USER6> Every Google code page is throwing 500 or 502 errors at the moment.

<comment><USER7> I had this issue for weeks. I finally jokingly tried logging out and everything worked for me. Could try that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Works for me in 7.0.521.0 (r58939) - running OSX 10.6

</comment><comment><USER9> I've heard there's a push to get rid of that tag, I wonder if they're purposefully holding off on implementing it.</comment>


India Surpassed the USA to Become the 2nd Largest Smartphone Market in the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.counterpointresearch.com/india-surpassed-usa-become-second-largest-smartphone-market-world-reaching-158-million-shipments-2019/ <comment><USER2> Internet Era has just begun in India. More and more 1st-time internet users are joining the wave.

Thanks (Or maybe no thanks because they created a monopoly in telecom sector) to Jio for making the Data rate too cheap and to manufacturers like Vivo, Xiaomi, and Oppo for making Smart Phones available at a cheap rate.

(Less than 1$ for 2-3 GB.)

<comment><USER3> > Jio for making the Data rate too cheap

> (Less than 1$ for 2-3 GB.)

Cheap is not the same as affordable. 1$ in India is equivalent to ~18 US$ [0].

[0] [https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power- parities-p...](https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities- ppp.htm)

<comment><USER4> Actually these numbers are misleading - actual rates are much lower. For example, Jio has a Rs. 149 (2.1 USD) plan for 24 days for 1 GB per day. That works out to about 10 cents for a GB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its important to distinguish between internet users and internet consumers. Only India 1 (115 million) have the money to really spend, they are consumers. India 2(approx 450 mio and are those who in large parts work for india 1) have older smartphones or feature phones and only some of them have money to spent.

A lot of bad vc investments didnt make that distinction and got hurt.

None the less lots of opportunities there for thos who can find products or services india 2 can afford.

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, India1 almost exclusively speaks English, and essentially 'Anglo-Saxon' in culture. It's unsurprising that business models targeting India1 (or indeed any model, be it 'development', 'education') almost never scale for the rest of India.

It's rather sad that after 70+ years of 'independence', the country can't seem to shake off its servile colonial mindset. The 'nationalists' in power are no better in this regard - indications are that they are infact worse.

<comment><USER7> So, being rich and educated is bad because apparently you think they're acting like slaves, but being traditionalist is also bad?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great news for India as more people are gaining access to the Internet. However, this is only one side of the story. The ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) in India is around 72 INR which is approximately 1 USD per _month_. For the US, it is approximately 50 USD per month. This figure makes a big difference as far as the revenue opportunity is concerned. This affects telecom operators a lot more than mobile phone manufacturers. India is also one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It is expected that not only more people will come online but also the per capita income will grow rapidly that will make it more lucrative in the future.

<comment><USER9> Is that $1 or $50 only the user's cost of the service (for calls and data), or does it also include spending on apps, in-app purchases, paying a debt on the phone and so on?

If it's just the service, $50 seems very high for an average. The most expensive phone service contract I can find here in Denmark is $45.

<comment><USER10> Depends what kind of service you want. Best coverage and minimum throttling is $70 to $80 per person (Verizon and ATT). Being on family plans can bring it down to $40 to $50 though. Minimum is $30+ on Sprint or T-Mobile.

<comment><USER11> I guess a lot of it is the difference in population density, but that does seem expensive. In the UK, you can get top-level coverage (O2's network) 80GB 4g with unlimited calls/texts for £20/month (~26USD). I currently pay £10/month for 6GB, which is a lot worse value per GB, but more than covers my needs.

<comment><USER12> Pretty easy to get cheaper deals too when you've been a customer for a few years.

I pay £5/m for unlimited data, 600mins, unlimited texts on Three. I know I've been super lucky with that deal in particular.

<comment><USER10> I suspect in the US, how much you pay (or who you are) determines your priority on a congested tower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has been fueled by cheap internet rates promoted by Jio and followed by other players in the market. I really appreciate this development as this gave access to countless business and introduction/improvement of few others too. However, I am worried that this development has been led without proper framework to tackle issues like privacy, fake news, surveillance etc.,

</comment><comment><USER14> Indian cellphone market is dominated nearly completely by Chinese brands

</comment><comment><USER15> Which companies stand to gain most financially from this growth in a new market?

<comment><USER16> If you have an app that solves something we take for granted in the West, and the initial cost barrier is very low, you have a great business model for the Indian market.

When WhatsApp cost $1 per year it had a terrific business model for the emerging markets. Now that it's free Facebook is complaining that they don't make enough money.</comment></comment>


KwiqFlick – Store and share files, we believe in simple and easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.kwiqflickfeatures.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We strongly believe that file transfer and storage is an important thing to everyone, because it's so important to share ideas and information. Right now, we're navigating through and around clunky ways of doing it and we want to change that by making these two things seamless and easy.</comment>


Steve Gibson's Never 10 Helps You Turn Off the Windows 10 Upgrade - <AUTHOR> https://www.grc.com/never10.htm <comment><USER2> Another attempt from Gibson to try and stay relevant? No thanks, I'll recommend the Microsoft KB article: [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/3080351](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351)

<comment><USER3> I know right? Who wouldn't prefer to follow a manual multi-stage process over pressing a little button - that's too easy. You learn a lot more about how windows operates when you get under the hood and do some grunt work.

I'll be sure to let my mother know about this KB article. Thanks siigna!

<comment><USER4> Created an account just to say this? Really driven by the madness.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Pixel 3 - <AUTHOR> https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_3 <comment><USER2> Tangential, I know I need to get myself a better laptop but come on Google. I use Chrome. This page should load in 1/2 seconds max, images included. It froze for a minute and I just hit the back button because whatever was happening wasn't worth the wait.

Or I'm not just the target since whatever computer I'm running "can' t take" whatever is happening on that page.

For the sake of it I went to [https://www.apple.com/lae/iphone- xs/](https://www.apple.com/lae/iphone-xs/) which I never visited before to compare loading speed on my computer. The latter loaded instantly, although the scrolling is a bit choppy, it does scroll, while Google landing page is completely frozen, trying to play a video and what not.

Google, your UX is a complete disaster. How can you hire the best people and end up something horrible such as that landing page?

<comment><USER3> It's not just you, I'm on a speedy desktop with lots of RAM, and Firefox and Chrome both choke on that page for both initial loading and responsiveness, and scrolling. This is a dev machine, about as good as Google's average user is going to get, and the only reason I tolerated the experience was to see how bad it was. I would have otherwise closed the tab given that I don't _think_ I have an interest in a Pixel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can no one come up with a better design than Apple? I get it, the notch "works", but isn't there something else or distinctive?

<comment><USER5> Apple didn't come up with the notch. Essential and Sharp were first:

[https://www.phonearena.com/news/history-of-the-notch-and- bez...](https://www.phonearena.com/news/history-of-the-notch-and-bezel-less- smartphone-design_id105800)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Odd that there's links to "gstore-internal.corp.google.com" here (under "Find your phone. Get up to $300 back").

<comment><USER7> Looks like it's not linking to "gstore-internal.corp.google.com" anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does it support dual sim when using eSIM and nanosim together?</comment>


How to build a robot that "sees" with $100 and TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/learning/how-to-build-a-robot-that-sees-with-100-and-tensorflow?twitter=@bigdata <comment><USER2> Just a nit, but the author keeps talking about object recognition while what he was actually doing is image classification. Object recognition actually consists of two tasks, one is classifying the object (this is a beer bottle) and the other is also says where in the image the object is. Additionally it can/should detect multiple objects in the image. This is a more complex than classification, which only associates one category with the image.

<comment><USER3> [http://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/](http://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/), [https://github.com/daijifeng001/MNC](https://github.com/daijifeng001/MNC), [https://bitbucket.org/aquariusjay/deeplab-public- ver2](https://bitbucket.org/aquariusjay/deeplab-public-ver2) or similar should do the job. Choose depending on how fast it needs to be, and how accurate the segmentation boundaries need to be

<comment><USER4> Here's another one: [https://github.com/facebookresearch/deepmask](https://github.com/facebookresearch/deepmask)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > recognizing arbitrary objects within a larger image has been the Holy Grail > of artificial intelligence

The Holy Grail is general AI. Recognizing objects is a side quest, perhaps a required step, but, by no means, the end goal.

<comment><USER6> Like so many other things in the field of AI, general object recognition was the "holy grail" because it was assumed that it required AGI. Now we've figured out a way to do general object recognition without AGI.

<comment><USER7> Is there a story somewhere of AI researchers concluding general object recognition was the holy grail of AI?

I get that a lot of people downplay achievements in machine learning by saying it's nothing like AGI, but it's almost a meme now that "once upon a time everyone thought that was the holy grail and they're moving the signposts" even when 1) nobody thought that, or 2) some people thought that and some people didn't think that.

<comment><USER8> I - for what it is worth - would still say general object recognition, with the emphasis on general, is indeed the holy grail.

The ability to recognize objects like people do is not properly represented by current benchmarks. I can imagine that you can built a perfect robotic "bird spotter" but if you put that in a self-driving car I would not be surprised if it stops for something that's just a shadow, or if you put it on a humanoid it's unable to distinguish its own hand from that of its clone. Imagine two of them cleaning out the dishwasher. :-)

A lot of AI is still working only in lab conditions or restricted application domains. That's why I consider robots and cars so important in driving AI towards the "general" dimension.

<comment><USER8> Now a nice article that addresses some limitations of vision: [https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/tesla-mobileeye-and-deep- lea...](https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/tesla-mobileeye-and-deep- learning-b7ceb8828482#.eqkz0yu62)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was amazing, I am amazed at your command of both hardware and software technology. Even as a Software Engineer, I have a hard time trying to make TensorFlow do something for me.

<comment><USER3> To do the task in the article (classify images, pretrained model) - it's pretty easy - just follow the tutorial here:

[https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.10/tutorials/image_re...](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.10/tutorials/image_recognition/index.html)

<comment><USER10> I tried that ([https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.9/how_tos/image_retra...](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/r0.9/how_tos/image_retraining/index.html)) which seems to work well.

<comment><USER3> yep, that's good if you want to retrain a pre-trained model for specific categories on new image data (that are pretty close to imagenet type images)

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by "pretty close"? What would be "not close"?

<comment><USER3> Something that looks very different to the ImageNet dataset. Microscope, ultrasound, satellite, x-ray etc images

<comment><USER10> Ok, I see. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would like to know how long it "thinks"\- it is clear the camera is paused for a while while the robot parses the image..

<comment><USER12> It thinks for around 3 seconds. It doesn't use the PI's GPU - I bet that if it did it could get a lot faster. I bet you could monkey around with the compiler flags and speed it up. If anyone working on TensorFlow has some ideas, I'd love to hear them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My biggest current question is which keyboard is this, on the image in the article?!

[https://d3ansictanv2wj.cloudfront.net/Figure_2-985cd20ea0c0b...](https://d3ansictanv2wj.cloudfront.net/Figure_2-985cd20ea0c0bcd68a7d896f11312edf.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Looks like Karnotech Foldable Silicone Keyboard

<comment><USER13> Looks like you are right. Based on the image I thought it was something mechanical. Looks nice, but I'm not fond of foldable keyboards :( .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great project. Locomotion and vision are pretty advanced compared to grasping and complex handling of objects. If we could have a workable arm, it would be much more interesting in applications.

<comment><USER16> There are some affordable robot arms. uArm has a hobbyist-level arm. I have one, and I made a 6DOF force sensor out of a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator on the end and got it to talk to ROS. I want to hook a classifier system up to it so it can use tools like end wrenches and get them onto a bolt by feel.

Robot manipulation in unstructured situations still sucks, though. Willow Garage was making progress, but didn't last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dis the author publish a repo for this? It's easy getting tensorflow going for basic image classification but the hard part is actually making the robot move in a way that makes sense - using the camera and the sonar data to make decisions and then drive the motors. Or is this not autonomous?

<comment><USER17> "I then built a simple Python webserver to spin the wheels of the robot based on keyboard commands that made for a nifty remote control car."

So, not autonomous it would seem. With that and an arm, though, you could eventually get it to play fetch...

<comment><USER3> Ah, right. You could do this project with a cheap RC car and a phone running TF stuck on it

<comment><USER18> Since when did TF started to run on stock phones?

<comment><USER3> A few months ago.

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/contrib/ios_examples)

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/examples/android)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of a low res vision system I read about 20 years ago:

        http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/jan97/lowresv.html

I've always been kind of intrigued by what is possible with very simple hardware.

<comment><USER20> Do you know what ever happened to the Encoder? I used to be so excited as a kid when a new issue came out.

<comment><USER19> No I don't.

It was a fantastic resource and I bet it was a lot of work to put one together. I sure appreciated the people that took the time to make it.

I always wanted to find some way to get to one of their meetings but it never worked out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh my god. You are trying to build the exact thing I am trying to build. Albeit you've made much more progress.

I'm still soldering wires into the motors. You should take off the paper from acrylic. The transparent effect makes it look awesome.

My goal is to make a raspberry pi bot that plays indoor fetch. I would love to have a chat with you.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sorry for the off topic but is anyone else getting very high cpu usage from O'Reilly websites? Any known resolution or work around?

With Chrome developer tools I see one error: "Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document."</comment>