So let me get this straight. If there were *real* carbon offset credits, that would in your view be *just as dishonest* as fraudulent ones?

This is equally true of almost every other use case people have dreamed up for globally distributed ledgers. Unless there is no one who can be trusted to operate a centralized transaction database, the database will always be cheaper, faster and better. And it's even fine to have a set of centralized databases that get mutually reconciled on a regular basis -- which is how the financial systems work.

The only truly good application of distributed ledgers I've seen is for transparency-related projects where you want the data to be fully public and to make it impossible for any party or even large group of parties to subvert. Things like Certificate Transparency. I expect some future systems to be stood up that focus on binary transparency, making it easy to verify in an automated way that the binaries you're running are the ones they're supposed to be and that they're reproducibly-built from a specified version of the source code.

I've yet to see any other use cases where the cost, complexity and overhead of globally-distributed ledgers is justified.

(Distributed ledgers do make a lot of sense in highly-scalable systems under the control of a single entity. For example many eventually-consistent web-scale databases are built on some form of distributed ledger.)

What, in your estimation, would these "competent computer people" do, exactly?

IMO it's better to use a TOTP app on your phone. Desktop OSes are significantly less secure than mobile OSes (though still better than SMS). But, yes, any RFC-compliant TOTP generator will work.

Google Authenticator is an RFC 6238 TOTP implementation, or you can use any other compliant implementation.

How do you ensure that a body part was actually scanned, rather than some bits being replayed? Biometrics provide very high security in attended contexts, e.g. where there's a security guard watching you present the body part to a scanner that is under the control of the entity who is trying to verify you. But when the scanning is done remotely, using scanning hardware that is under the control of the person being scanned, it really doesn't provide much security.

Another problem with biometrics is that body parts can get lost or damaged, locking people out of stuff. Imagine being unable to pay your bills because you got a little cut on your finger.

Biometrics have their place, they are valuable authentication tools, but they have serious limitations. They have to be combined with and backstopped by other authentication mechanisms.

Also, potentially a lot more books became available to those of us who prefer to listen rather than read. If the AI "performance" isn't too grating.

For most fiction and some types of non-fiction, I prefer audio books over the printed word, because they're more time-efficient. I read far faster than narrators read, but I mostly can't do anything else while reading. Being able to drive, mow the lawn, work on refitting my boat, etc., while consuming audio books has significantly increased the quantity of "reading" that I have time for.

I don't think so. I think it's just a mechanical reproduction of the original work, not really any different than a photocopy -- just a different tangible medium. In order to be a derived work, it would have to be a new work, i.e. some minimal amount of creativity would have to have been added, and I don't think an AI can legally add creativity. Perhaps the configuration choices of the person who set the AI up could be considered "minimal creativity". But if not, it's just a copy in a different medium.

how?

It would just be a mechanical reproduction of the original work, so only the original work's copyright would apply.

In the case of a human narrating an audiobook, the resulting work is a derived work, and both the narrator and the author have rights to it. To copy and redistribute it you need the authorization of both.

But in this case, it's just a copy. If whoever ran the AI on it added some of their own creative choices, for example, inserting, deleting or modifying text, then it would again be a derived work. It's even possible that if the only choices they made were which voice to use and how to configure it, that might also be enough to make it a derived work. But the original author still has an interest in the derived work, so none of this works as a way to escape the original owner's rights.

Yes, same as if you ran the book through a photocopier. In both cases, as long as you kept the copy to yourself nothing would come of it. The copyright owner could technically sue you for damages, if they found out, but there would be no damages to recover.

A lot of people don't realize that their primary email account is the key to pretty much every other account they have, because approximately all online accounts use email to secure their forgotten password reset flows.

Personally, I treat my email account as my "crown jewel", the most important thing in my life to secure, since it's the key to everything else. Many of my financial accounts will, of course, send me a notification that my password is changed -- via email, to the same email account (some of them allow a separate account, in which case I have them set to notify my wife's account, but not most). A few of the most important financial accounts will also send a followup snail mail notification of the password change, but an attacker can easily drain them before I get that notification.

I agree with the sentiment, but in practice most adults don't understand how to secure their accounts. Some nannying is justified here.

In that era, most people became slaves when their cities were conquered, and the normal practice was to slaughter the entire population. Slavery was seen as a merciful alternative to death, so it's safe to assume that all slaves were grateful that they were enslaved rather than killed, as evidenced by the fact that they chose not to kill themselves.

Modern sensibilities cannot relate to the idea that slavery was merciful, but it was. Plato himself was was to be executed but was instead sold into slavery, though he had a friend who bought his freedom relatively quickly. Likewise, if you read Plato's works, you'll find quite a bit in there that is shocking to modern views. Plato was an incredibly forward-thinking man for his times... but his was a product of his times.

To alvinrod's point, you almost certainly hold some beliefs that future generations will consider immoral, so it's not wise to judge the people of the past by current standards.

Italy and Japan have shrinking populations. We would too, if it weren't for immigration. However our population growth rate is still low, and if it were any lower we'd be facing serious economic and social challenges. Sure, a shrinking population would drop housing prices, but we are far from having so many people there isn't space to fit them. Our real problem is seventy years of public policy aimed at the elimination of "slums" and the prevention of their reemergence.

If you think about it, "slum" is just a derogatory word for a neighborhood with a high concentration of very affordable housing. Basically policy has by design eliminated the most affordable tier of housing, which eliminates downward price pressure on higher tiers of housing. Today in my city a median studio apartment cost $2800; by the old 1/5 of income rule that means you'd need an income of $168k. Of course the rule now is 30% of income, so to afford a studio apartment you need "only" 112k of income. So essentially there is no affordable housing at all in the city, even for young middle class workers. There is, however a glut of *luxury* housing.

In a way, this is what we set out to accomplish: a city where the only concentrations of people allowed are wealthy people. We didn't really think it through; we acted as if poor to middle income people would just disappear. In reality two things happened. First they got pushed further and further into the suburbs, sparking backlash by residents concerned with property values. And a lot of people, even middle-class young people, end up in illegal off-the-book apartments in spaces like old warehouses and industrial spaces.

Yeah, Na-ion is not for cars.

I vacation around the US in an EV all the time, and it's really not an issue. Not unless your vacation travel is of the "pee-in-a-bottle-no-stopping" sort. If you aren't hardcore about minimizing travel time, making stops for decent meals, and stops for bathroom breaks and leg stretching, you'll find that you spend little if any time waiting for the car to charge. What you do is drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for 15 minutes for bathroom (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for an hour for lunch (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for 15 minutes for bathroom (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for an hour for dinner (and charging), then drive for 2-3 hours, then stop for the night (and charging).

Basically, you just make sure that whenever you stop for biological needs, you do in a place you can plug in. This is quite easy to do.

You do want to pick hotels with chargers to overnight. If you don't, then you'll probably have to 30-45 minutes in the morning to charge (during breakfast?).

I've done several thousand miles of road trips with an EV in the western US, where distances are long and cities are far apart. It works fine.

You actually can't in the US, not on the interstates, anyway. Tesla has the US interstates covered, with chargers every ~75 miles. Sometimes this means there's a Supercharger out in the middle of the desert, sure. There's always a gas station/convenience store there, too. Also, you don't actually have to think about when/where you're going to charge. The car's navigation system tells you where you need to stop and for how long.

If you get off the Interstates, you can find larger distances between L3 chargers. In practice I've never found it to be a problem, though.