really? given the huge amounts of money in traditional banking, it's remarkable how very few stories there are of shenanigans like this--vs the overwhelming number of stories about crypto. it is fair to say that there is a huge risk--even a likelihood--of losing all your money (and more if you borrow) in crypto, and virtually no risk in traditional banking. especially once you try to point to a substantial number of frauds in traditional banking where the defrauded person was unable to recover all or most of their funds due to deposit insurance, chargebacks, and all the mechanisms built into that system that crypto folks think hurt their precious "freedom." you'll find a few, sure, but they are very infrequent.

it's also funny to think about the fact that right now, the US Fed is doing the exact opposite of what crypto promoters call "printing money" specifically in order to curb real inflation--that is, they are raising interest rates in order to reduce the amount of easy money in circulation, hopefully to lower prices or at least the rate of increase in prices. yet the crypto promoters keep going on and on about "printing money" which is or which causes "inflation" being all the evil central banks do. almost like they don't really care about what central banks actually do. almost

no reputable financial analyst says that short-term market trends are determined by corporate fundamentals: to the contrary, most say that predicting short-term trends is a fool's errand. the issue, like the kind of analyst predictions you are talking about, is medium- and long-term trends. for most listed companies, publicly-traded shares represent ownership in the company. the market capitalization of the stock (the number of shares outstanding times the share price) is the price one has to pay to own the company. if over time, the market capitalization of the company is far below the earnings potential for the company, it becomes an attractive investment for people/companies with a lot of money, who will step in and buy all or most of those shares--often at a premium to the stock price. if on the other hand the market cap is well above what the company earnings & other fundamentals indicate, this presents an opportunity for short-sellers and others who try to exploit the gap and in so doing keep the market cap closer to the fundamentals. stocks, especially the major public companies, very rarely trade over the medium- and long-term such that their market capitalization and corporate fundamentals are completely out of line with each other for just this reason. this is one of the simplest types of merger & acquisition, and happens literally every day. it is one of the main functions of the stock market. it is a close tie between something real--the earnings, sales, revenue, assets, & other facts about the company--and the stock market. in every way it is the opposite of what we see in cryptocurrency markets.

my favorite and the best part of this is the implicit conviction that "we" are part of a simulation and yet that "we" could "break out" of it. far more likely would be the same thing we see in our own simulations: there is no person "in there" separate from the "in there" to begin with. if we are simulated, we are simulated, period. then in some ultimate "real" reality, "we" don't exist at all. so there is no breaking out, any more than it would make sense for Mario to break out of Super Mario Brothers. believing otherwise is reflective of the typical unthinking arrogance of tech billionaires: "we're inside a simulation, but WE ARE SPECIAL PARTS OF THE SIMULATION." that's not how simulations work.

statements with "is" about complex social phenomena with multiple definitions always strike me as quite bizarre. capitalism has multiple definitions depending on the source. as a ballpark definition that conforms with most Economics texts, Wikipedia isn't bad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism):

Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industries, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labour and, in many models, competitive markets. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.

Since all economic systems are descriptions created by scholars & advocates, there is no "real" definition of capitalism beyond what various people think. I tend to agree with the above posters, and Wikipedia, that "capitalism" as it is used in most economic and political discussions today does entail the ability to collect, store, and earn income from market transactions, and that this is conceptually distinct from markets. what I don't agree with is that empirically these things can ever be separated, apart from very limited and highly constrained circumstances. any relatively free market allows participants to hoard, causing supply/demand imbalances; that hoarding eventually turns into capital, if by no other power than by the hoarder's ability to loan out his supply and receive interest income (aka "rent") from the party lent to. i am completely unconvinced by the libertarian socialist arguments for free markets without capitalism, especially given the libertarian commitment to (at best) a "night watchman" state: without constraints on hoarding and manipulation, and without some worldwide and unimaginable resetting of the economy so that everyone starts at 0--a resetting that itself would be an amazing political event that would probably obviate any need for this kind of political strategic discussion--those who already have a lot will always be able to use that to their advantage, to corner markets and manipulate supply/demand imbalances. so while "free markets" and "capitalism" are conceptually distinct, my view is that in the real world, you can't have free markets without capitalism. whether you could have capital itself without free markets is a more complex and esoteric question--arguably, to use your example, the USSR functioned as a storer of capital in the world economy, but the international markets were not "free" by anyone's definition.

Bitcoin has repealed the dictionary

what part of "the Bitcoin technology licenses me to make up and redefine words however I see fit" don't you understand? only Bitcoin has intrinsic value, because "intrinsic value" means "the cool thing only Bitcoin has."

confused by your joint mention of "workplace monitoring" and being "more careful about your privacy." In most corporations, privacy and monitoring settings are, as your headline suggests, determined by the employer, and employees currently have no legal rights that trump the employer's right to determine those settings, in part to enable monitoring which the company is legally entitled and in some cases required to do, and in many cases is required to allow its systems to be open in various ways to law enforcement examination. If by "more careful about your privacy" you mean "don't search for backpacks to buy at work," I'm honestly not sure how to turn that into an effective privacy principle, beyond "don't do anything at work."

the story says "the technology is designed to facilitate internet browsing." Is it wrong? do we know for sure?

what is the difference between "presenting ads to Google glass users" and "internet browsing"? Is Glass going to come with built-in ad-blockers for all web pages? Are they going to build special software to prohibit Glass-specific advertising on web pages that are not in any kind of partnership with Glass? This seems to me like a way of controlling the advertising revenue streams for Google more than anything else, since Google's pages are larded with ads and Glass will inherently drive traffic to those pages, both inside and outside of the Glass environment. I wonder if it even raises antitrust implications, as it tremendously biases the products toward Google's advertising & commerce platforms while pushing others out.

unfortunately for your accusations, O'Reilly IS a technolibertarian, overtly supports outsourcing of critical government functions, is mostly concerned with getting government "out of the way" to allow corporate "innovation," and the responsibility part of government is of little interest to him, as Morozov's piece suggests. Read: O'Reilly's "government as platform": http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html Harvard Law Professor Jennifer Shkabatur's "Transparency With(out) Accountability: Open Government in the United States": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2028656

this is a particular kind of fallacious pro-technology argument that deserves some attention: "it has a good use, so it should be allowed." this is a fallacy because the good use doesn't discount or prevent the bad use. they are, generally, entirely separate issues. Further, in this case, there are specific technologies available and in development to do the driving-specific tasks you name.There has already been controversy about computer technologies in automobiles not directly related to driving. I believe the state of law and industry practice right now is that HUD interfaces that give driving information, like dashboard tools directly related to driving, are acceptable, but that there is great concern over displays (even ones for controlling the stereo, heat of the car, etc.) that aren't directly related to the road in front of the driver. This is why GPS systems get locked out, even though they are directly related to driving--even the little bits of interaction drivers do with them can be distracting. People wildly overestimate their ability to focus on such tools, even when they are related to the drive. (I include myself.) the issue with Google Glass has nothing to do with this: it is the availability of tools *not* related to driving. slashdot readers know that there is no way to put a "lock" on Glass that creative users won't get around. if and when someone develops a HMD that is solely devoted to driving, I suspect that would have to be legislated separately, although it's hard to see why that would be more useful and/or not integrated into the manufacturer's HUD. Of course, Google's Driverless Cars will soon make much of this moot anyway. Sort of.