BlueTemplar

What kind of 'infrastructure' did China have when they had "fallen out" with Google (in 2010?), that the EU does not have now ?

For the worst, you mean ?

The current arrangement has been torpedoed a long time ago already, with the Patriot Act (2001) (though it took many years to understand the extent of it).

No, I want to insist on Bitcoin's intellectual legacy. Before ~2011, only a handful of niche nerds at the intersection of cryptography and (goldbug) economics had heard of related ideas. After ~2011, everybody had, and started building their own (like Etherium).

You can't even buy a fucking game without it being encrusted in anti-user DRM.

You very much can. And notably, exceptions that do use it tend to be from giant public corporations.

It is. I guess that it's more of an issue for banks in smaller countries ? (But how come SEPA is not more widely used even for B2C sales then ?)

Sounds like the digital euro might also have been designed to help with these issues ?

Yeah, it's uncommon, but bank wire does exist, and while (like cheques) it's typically used for paying rent / utilities / sending money to non-businesses, it does seem to become more common since it was improved to be 'instant' ?

I never had a credit card. I cannot remember having an issue paying with debit cards.

That network still exists, and can now even be used preferentially over Visa/MasterCard, in particular when paying online.

My debit card is both MasterCard and CB. And a few months ago I noticed that I could pick either network when paying online.

Those would be easy in comparison to the Marvel (Disney) ones. 6 expected sets !

Not to mention that it's the Arena workers, they are downstream of the card design process.

2011 is when it had its first big public boom - and bust, accompanied by even generalist press reporting on it.

And the nerds at Valve would have been *in particular* aware of it. So causality is more likely to be reversed in that example.

"Break the law" is too weak of a term since it includes routing around the monetary systems overseen by incompetent / corrupt / totalitarian governments.

That last example postdates Bitcoin, and even Bitcoin entering public consciousness (in 2011), so why bring it up ?

'stable'coins are a lie though. They just hide the risk, they do not make it go away. (At least bank accounts are insured up to a certain amount.)

If you think that 'teenager' is too old (which I am skeptical about, considering the current popularity of Roblox), replace by 'kid'.

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More complications, more points of failure.

It's certainly possible that Valve is not being truthful about the lottery. (Would that be illegal for them to do ?)

Concert/game tickets are in a extremely different situation. SM doesn't become completely worthless past a certain (near, known) date.

Imagine buying the SM for a teenager in your family that doesn't have a Steam Account yet.

One issue here is that one, very important for the future of Valve, type of target customer here is first time Steam users : teens without a console nor a (gaming) PC. April 2026 is already going to be a problem for them.

(Though I guess someone in their family can enter the lottery for them.)

If you know MSRP

Giving a list price would make no sense in the case of an auction, in fact would be misleading, (maybe even illegal ??), and not just because of these issues.

Most people would bid the maximum that they can justify. That's like saying that only scalpers take part in auctions (easy counter example : eBay).

Which is pretty much what they did :

You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.

Already was there on the leaked 2022 list.

Doesn't seem like it :

I’ve now been once. Everything is off the record, but I’ll just say that it is nothing like the ordinary conference where there are keynote lecturers you barely get to meet (if at all), or where you listen to some pre-packaged lecture.

There are no speeches, presentations, panels, or anything like that. Everything is geared around small-group discussions with 6-10 people in a session or a lunch/dinner. You repeatedly find yourself in deep conversations about life/death/family/career issues with a handful of other people who happen to have great professional accomplishments (although none of that is even mentioned). The experience was both intense (lots of intense conversations) and refreshing (i.e., no hierarchy or status-signaling).

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/02/16/hey-i-got-...

EDIT : or maybe it's more complex than that :

https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-private-dialog-...

I have only had the minimum of time to look into it, so far I only found his own vague justification, his wife supposedly(?) being part of Open AI, a multimedia platform he made then maybe or maybe not un/ethically provided the data of it to Ubisoft, him supposedly lobbying against section 230, and even more vague accusations of 'Zionism'.

a free software license alone does not empower users to be truly free if they lack the expertise to exercise those freedoms

This is a bullshit argument, and I'm surprised that people aware enough of these issues would try to push it.

Closed (or online-only) software prevents not only the end user from modifying it, but also 'unlicensed' hackers that the end user can ask for help.

See the "right to repair" movement as a very close example. The possibility of an 'ecosystem' of middlemen like these, matters !

The use of black boxes like neural networks is already effectively illegal in some governments for this very reason.

Oh yeah, plenty of that, even scientists and thinkers were tempted, we had plenty of details even before the 'files', thanks to Maxwell's phone book :

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyo...

No, I'm upset that he took money from the Kremlin and hosted a show on Russia Today. (At least it was before 2014 I guess...)

How is it far off if it's already used like this, just on the side of submitters ?

No, exposing Western corruption is all well and good, but the problem is that at some point Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia.