No new Bitcoin: Don't touch Facebooks Libra!

Facebook wants to become the central bank with Libra and profit from the Bitcoin hype. But the blockchain is primarily a facade, Libra is neither decentralized nor a crypto currency.

If Facebook is the answer, Libra will develop into a world currency. But the Facebook coin has little in common with Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. Libra is a digital currency that resembles Wechat Pay rather than Bitcoin. The question of whether Libra is a crypto currency is directly related to considerations of privacy and user trust.

Crypto currencies vs. central banks
With the blockchain as a technology and especially with crypto currencies, a lot revolves around trust. In principle, this is very similar to conventional currencies such as the euro, which also work solely because we trust, for example, that the state and the central bank will not devalue them. In the case of fiat currencies, i.e. uncovered money, recent history - actually only from the 20th century onwards - has shown that this trust in the state is not always justified. Replacing this blind trust in a central authority that controls the monetary system has been one of the core promises of crypto currencies from the outset and can be found in Bitcoin's first announcement, written by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Facebook also wants to give the impression that its digital currency is decentralized, so that users do not have to rely on a central authority. Libra is to be controlled by the Libra Association based in Switzerland, which includes many other companies such as Paypal, Visa, Uber and Mastercard. The mere fact that many well-known companies are on board - and have each paid at least ten million US dollars for it - combined with the ambitious goal of creating a global financial network, is causing a lot of hype. If you then stick the label "Blockchain" on such an ambitious project, you can be sure that everyone is talking about it.

Decentralised, my ass: Libra Association acts as central bank
"[The new blockchain for the global currency] is a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility crypto currency that acts as a medium of exchange for billions of people," the Libra white paper says. Admittedly, there are many superficial technical reminiscences of Ethereum or Bitcoin in Libra: Smart Contracts, Dapps, Move, a programming language of its own, and all that even faster and better. The Libra blockchain is to be used by around 2.7 billion people who have a Facebook profile and can process up to 1,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin processes around seven transactions per second.

Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, the Libra Blockchain is not a public blockchain, but a Consortium Blockchain in which only paying members of the Libra Association are involved in mining. According to Facebook, this is necessary in order to avoid problems such as high energy consumption, slow transactions and other difficulties that plague Bitcoin, for example. For this reason alone, the Libra Association acts as a sort of central bank. According to Facebook, this will change after five years and the Libra blockchain will open, but one can be sceptical about this.

https://t3n.de/news/libra-ist-keine-kryptowaehrung-kein-bitcoin-1172551/

#DeleteFacebook #libra #CryptoCurrency #decentralized #paypal #visa #uber #mastercard #why
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"Dopamin": Miniseries about the addiction mechanisms of Tinder, Facebook and Co.

"They'll do anything to make you an addict," they say about #Tinder, #Facebook, #CandyCrush, #Instagram, #YouTube, #Snapchat, #Uber and #Twitter in the miniseries of #Arte. Eight episodes explain in detail which mechanisms are triggered in our brain to keep us engaged

📺 Dopamine - Tinder

📺 Dopamine - Facebook

📺 Dopamine - Candy Crush

📺 Dopamine - Instagram

📺 Dopamine - YouTube

📺 Dopamine - Snapchat

📺 Dopamine - Uber

📺 Dopamine - Twitter

💡 Actually, we have known this for a long time:
Candy Crush, Tinder, Facebook and others are above all one thing - time wasters. Nevertheless, it's extremely difficult for us to leave the #Smartphone on the shelf and not check out what's new every few minutes. Especially since what is then presented to us as news only rarely has news value or really gets us ahead. Nevertheless, we check out pages and pages of Aunt Monika's pictures from Paris, swear to complete "only one more level" at Candy Crush, let ourselves be carried away by the autoplay function into ever more abstruse depths of Youtube and simply can't get enough of cute cat photos on Instagram. What's wrong with us?

#Tinder #Facebook #CandyCrush #Instagram #YouTube #Snapchat #Uber #Twitter #Dopamin #video #thinkabout
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"Dopamine": Miniseries about the addiction mechanisms of Tinder, Facebook and Co. (RePost)

"They'll do anything to make you an addict," they say about #Tinder, #Facebook, #CandyCrush, #Instagram, #YouTube, #Snapchat, #Uber and #Twitter in the miniseries of #Arte. Eight episodes explain in detail which mechanisms are triggered in our brain to keep us engaged

📺 Dopamine - Tinder

📺 Dopamine - Facebook

📺 Dopamine - Candy Crush

📺 Dopamine - Instagram

📺 Dopamine - YouTube

📺 Dopamine - Snapchat

📺 Dopamine - Uber

📺 Dopamine - Twitter

💡 Actually, we have known this for a long time:
Candy Crush, Tinder, Facebook and others are above all one thing - time wasters. Nevertheless, it's extremely difficult for us to leave the #Smartphone on the shelf and not check out what's new every few minutes. Especially since what is then presented to us as news only rarely has news value or really gets us ahead. Nevertheless, we check out pages and pages of Aunt Monika's pictures from Paris, swear to complete "only one more level" at Candy Crush, let ourselves be carried away by the autoplay function into ever more abstruse depths of Youtube and simply can't get enough of cute cat photos on Instagram. What's wrong with us?

#Tinder #Facebook #CandyCrush #Instagram #YouTube #Snapchat #Uber #Twitter #Dopamine #video #thinkabout
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Uber and Lyft pricing algorithms charge more in non-white areas

The algorithms that ride-hailing companies, such as Uber and Lyft, use to determine fares appear to create a racial bias.

By analysing transport and census data in Chicago, Aylin Caliskan and Akshat Pandey at The George Washington University in Washington DC have found that ride-hailing companies charge a higher price per mile for a trip if the pick-up point or destination is a neighbourhood with a higher proportion of ethnic minority residents than for those with predominantly white residents.

“Basically, if you’re going to a neighbourhood where there’s a large African-American population, you’re going to pay a higher fare price for your ride,” says Caliskan.

http://newscientist.com/article/2246202-uber-and-lyft-pricing-algorithms-charge-more-in-non-white-areas/

#uber #lyft

Uber offers COVID-19 contact tracing help amid chaotic U.S. response

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc has quietly launched a service to give public health officials quick access to data on drivers and riders presumed to have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19, company officials told Reuters.

The service, offered free of charge, could help burnish the image of the ride-hailing giant, which recently launched a new ad campaign spotlighting its “No Mask, No Ride” policy in the United States.

Now being promoted to government health officials in all the countries where it operates, the service provides health departments with data about who used Uber’s services and when and allows health agencies to urge affected users into quarantine, the company officials said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-uber-focus/uber-offers-covid-19-contact-tracing-help-amid-chaotic-u-s-response-idUSKCN24L17X

#uber #privacy

Click on the hashtags. If the note doesn't show up, just type the hashtag in the chat. Else, the note got vanished

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Judge blocks Uber, Lyft from classifying drivers as contractors in California

(Reuters) - A California judge on Monday granted the state’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) and Lyft Inc (LYFT.O) from classifying their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.

The ruling by Judge Ethan Schulman of San Francisco Superior Court is a defeat for the ride-hailing companies, as they defend against a May 5 lawsuit by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-california/judge-blocks-uber-lyft-from-classifying-drivers-as-contractors-in-california-idUSKCN2562J6

#US #California #Lyft #Uber

Lyft may suspend service in California if court requires it to classify drivers as employees

Lyft may suspend services in California if the state does not overturn a recent ruling requiring it to classify its drivers as full-time employees, Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

Shares of Lyft were as high as 6% after hours, but went negative when Zimmer said Lyft might suspend service in the state.

Uber would also likely pause its service in California if the ruling is not overturned, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an MSNBC interview Wednesday. Khosrowshahi said a suspension would likely last until November when voters would decide on the ballot measure, Proposition 22, which would exempt drivers for app-based transportation and delivery companies from being considered employees.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/lyft-president-says-it-may-have-to-suspend-service-in-california.html

#US #California #Lyft #Uber

Prosecutors: Former Uber exec charged in hacking cover-up

A former Uber executive was charged Thursday in federal court on allegations that he arranged to pay hackers $100,000 to cover up a high-tech heist that stole the personal information about 57 million of the ride-hailing service’s users and drivers during 2016.

Two hackers pleaded guilty in the scheme last year and are awaiting sentencing. The criminal complaint filed Thursday against Joseph Sullivan, Uber’s former chief security officer, alleges that the hackers shared the data with a third person — who may still have it.

https://apnews.com/972fd68cafc1533fa871ac8894bb931d

#US #Uber #hacking

What Happens If Uber and Lyft Flee California? Look at Austin

The ride-hail services are threatening to stop service in the Golden State to protest a judge's ruling. They did something similar in Texas in 2016.

Rafael Rodriguez remembers the moment he learned Uber and Lyft were leaving Austin. “It was Mother’s Day, and I was with my girl in a restaurant,” he says. “I said, ‘Now I’m not paying for that piña colada.’” Today, he laughs about it. But in 2016, the situation was worrying. Rodriguez was a full-time driver for the ride-hail companies. Just two days later, the platforms ditched the Texas capital, frustrated that they had lost a ballot measure that forced them to fingerprint potential drivers for background checks. Rodriguez was out of a job.

https://www.wired.com/story/uber-lyft-flee-california-austin/

#US #California #Uber #Lyft

Why Uber's business model is doomed

Like other ridesharing companies, it made a big bet on an automated future that has failed to materialise

Having threatened to pull out of California completely, Uber and Lyft recently won a temporary reprieve from orders to reclassify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. The companies argued they could not come up with a plan for doing so overnight, even though more than two years have passed since California’s supreme court ordered them to change their ways. The Californian labour law AB5 was supposed to end their non-compliance.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/24/gig-economy-uber-lyft-insecurity-crisis

#Uber #Lyft #hail #ride

We Are All Algorithms Now - Is that what's really destroying the legitimacy of our democracy?

I’ve never felt this way about an election before. For my entire adult life, campaigns could be exhilarating, tedious, crowded with incident or laden with foreboding, but you always felt that, at some point, there would be a resolution. The votes would be counted; the exit polls parsed; a decision made; and both sides would respect it. The one time that didn’t happen — in 2000 — I felt for the first time an inkling of what I feel in every part of my psyche now: a sense that the system itself was buckling.

👉🏼 ..(..)...
And the reason this dystopian scenario is so credible is not just the fault of these political actors. It’s ours too — thanks to the impact of social media. I think we’ve under-estimated just how deep the psychological damage has been in the Trump era — rewiring the minds of everyone, including your faithful correspondent, in ways that make democratic discourse harder and harder and harder to model. The new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, is, for that reason, a true must-watch. It doesn’t say anything shockingly new, but it persuasively weaves together a whole bunch of points to reveal just how deeply and thoroughly fucked we are. Seriously, take a look.

👉🏼 ..(..)..
For #Facebook and #Google and #Instagram and #Twitter, the business goal quickly became maximizing and monetizing human attention via #addictive #dopamine hits. Attention, they meticulously found, is correlated with emotional intensity, outrage, shock and provocation. Give artificial intelligence this simple knowledge about what distracts and compels humans, let the algorithms do their work, and the profits snowball. The cumulative effect — and it’s always in the same incendiary direction — is mass detachment from reality, and immersion in tribal fever.

👀 👉🏼 https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/we-are-all-algorithms-now

👀👇🏼 "Dopamine": Miniseries about the addiction mechanisms of Tinder, Facebook and Co. 👇🏼

"They'll do anything to make you an addict," they say about #Tinder, #Facebook, #CandyCrush, #Instagram, #YouTube, #Snapchat, #Uber and #Twitter in the miniseries of #Arte. Eight episodes explain in detail which mechanisms are triggered in our brain to keep us engaged

📺 👉🏼 https://t.me/BlackBox_Archiv/833 👈🏼 📺

#surveillance #capitalism #SocialDilemma #dystopian #democracy #thinkabout #why
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