New Samsung cell phones have many connections to Google.

There need to be laws limiting Google's invasions to user devices.

Fewer than 1 of a hundred ads are interesting to me. Maybe 1 in a thousand.

so you're talking about reporting and I'm talking about the fact that a bank closed an account unilaterally

I understand you're left wing, pro-government control, etc but this is not about giving more power to the government. this is about a BANK unilaterally deciding to close an account because they can't be bothered to "comply" with what you're talking.

There are also more "grey" uses for crypto. Until 2 years ago Argentina was under severe exchange controls, criminalizing the exchange of the rapidly devaluating peso and the government was setting an arbitrary value for the peso. It was under half of what the "black market" rate was. Many people working for foreign companies were circumventing all of this. If you used crypto, all that was taken away from you was the crypto fee.

If you used the "legal" means, you got hit with 1) exchange rate conversion where you lost 50% of your money, and after this, 35% income tax because the tax brackets were deliberately left unadjusted.

Yes, i know, you will say that "it's still illegal" because your view is "government is always right". But you know what? I'm not giving the government 70% of my income, work the same hours, and get paid less than a worker in the country, because the government wants to dictate the value of the currency.

circumventing international restrictions on money laundering and terrorist funding might not be the best example of one

To expand on my previous answer: You're assuming this was an attempt at "circumventing international restrictions". The problem is: we don't know. The bank won't tell and they say "we are not allowed to tell you why". This is ridiculous, this goes against the most absolutely basic concept of any justice systems: laws must be known. There are no "secret laws" that you may be breaking. But in this case, there are.

And btw, if you ever try to make an international wire transfer, the bank will, first of all, ask "destination country". If the country is in a black list, you shouldn't be allowed to click "send money". If the country is in a grey list, the bank should ask you for "more compliance documentation". But NOT just close your account with your money in it.

Yes but bank decisions are arbitrary and you have no recourse. They will cut off all communications from you. They won't tell you which rule you broke, and will refuse to talk to you on the phone. The bank WILL terminate your account, and in many cases keep your money (suspected of being "dirty"), unless you sue them. You can't present any paperwork. No, you have to go through the justice system.

All of this in the name of "compliance". Many times, it's not even required, they just do it "just in case". They'd rather deal with you (by ignoring you) than deal with the government.

All of those regulations need a much broader discussion, not just a "compliance sorry".

No, it's not. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's a guy who tried to pay a freelancer he hired. Hours after he wired the money, his bank contacted him and told him his transaction was canceled, and his account had to be closed. and the bank "legally couldn't tell him why".

I know it's easy to say such things from a "first world country where things work", but there are things out there that don't work. Sending money abroad is a headache. Always. Because governments DO NOT like money moving from one country to another. So they keep adding more "compliance requirements". And those compliance requirements just end up hitting the "high risk, low income" people. People who want to sell their services to a global marketplace but are prevented by regulations. This is not about taxes, but about how incredibly difficult the global trade system is.

Usually, even in first world countries, regular citizens can't receive an international bank transfer. You can however get PayPal or similar services - but the problem is that again those services will then keep your money imaginary and refuse to send it to a bank in your country (if you even had one), unless you're in one of a handful of countries where they integrate with banks.

There are thousands of people working around the world who have to rely on shitty services like Payoneer which loves to take 3% fees for anything - and will close your account, no warning and no recourse, with your money inside it, if you do anything wrong (for example, if someone wires you money instead of doing it as a "business transaction").

If you want to be more cynical about it: the system is working exactly as intended. Regulations are there to make sure that money can only flow in the direction your government wants to. You can only do business with friendly countries - usually in the G7 or the EU. Everyone else is not allowed in this cool kids club. The system is designed to keep poor countries poor and only allow vetted transactions to reach "dangerous" countries (big oil never has a problem with that). But individuals? Fuck them. We don't want them.

That's where crypto comes in. It's the big equalizer. Now suddenly you can send your money in minutes. You don't have to explain to your bank why you want to send or receive money, or justify it, or have them seize it while they decide if you're trustworthy or not. People don't like doing things "illegally" but my options are: either the banks and governments allows me to get paid, or I look for an alternative. People in poor countries want to exit poverty, not "do things legally and stay in poverty forever because that's the only thing that the legal frameworks accepts".

The "crypto is for criminals" narrative is pushed by the countries that want to maintain the status quo. Instead of that, try giving people legal ways to get paid and only then, you can make wide claims that "crypto is for criminals".

anecdotical:

I'm a Ham and I wanted to CAT control multiple radios and a couple serial port devices. I currently do this with multiple USB serial ports which is a pain because if you ever move them you'll get a different enumeration and have to reconfigure everything.

I asked an LLM to create a project for a multiport card with hardcoded serial numbers and configurable settings (speed, parity, polarity etc - even inter-byte delays).

It did everything as I requested. The only issue I had is that when I bootstraped the project i selected a different microcontroller target. But the result is now a serial port that 1) works exactly as intended, 2) has serial numbers which allows me to move it around ports without reconfiguring (Linux by-id path), 3) whatever quirks i can either fix or add as workarounds for badly behaving devices. 4) Is not a chinese clone that will refuse to work on windows because the official drivers detect it as counterfeit.

The experience was honestly just fantastic. I do NOT want to write code for a multiport serial card. It's completely boring drudge. There is nothing fun in it. There is just hundreds of #define and compiler guards for everything. This thing had a working solution in 10 minutes, of something that would probably take me an entire weekend to do myself - a weekend of, you know, not actually using my radios because I was too busy writing code. I was able to do what I really wanted (focus on the high level requirements and then actually use the product) instead of digging deep into a datasheet developing a skill I'll never use in my work (I don't do embedded code for work).

its during those sprints when I'm pumping out thousands of lines per day that I write the code that turns out to be the highest quality, requiring the fewest number of bugfixes later

yeah, all of us write (or copy/paste) great boilerplate code. that's not really something to be proud of.

we all make mistakes when writing business functions which are never 25k LOC in a week.

except no. because when you ask it to generate test cases it comes up with cases you didn't think of. and it then run the tests and fixes the errors.

my experience with both 20 years as a software developer in multiple teams, and LLM user, is that they are very similar in results to what a human produces without enough context.

every time I got a "ticket" to add a feature, the ticket wasn't 100% clear, it only provided happy path solutions, and LOL if it ever provided any test cases. The "extras" I added myself by just thinking "maybe it should have this. The LLM behaves 100% the same. except in the case of humans we call them "peer reviews" which usually just means "the control freak lead engineer who wrote the bad ticket is now extending the scope because what you developed exposed the 1000 ways that he didn't think of"

BOOK:
The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
https://www.amazon.com/Mindful...

No drug necessary.

The Underlying issue is: Why are some people depressed?

If we understand that, it is very likely that no drug will be necessary. People won't become depressed.