Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
Bitcoin meetups have a deep religious component, and attendees are unphased by the reality of mathematics, politics, or even basic sociology. I have seen a slide presentation that contained this: Slide 1: Top: bunch of people figures Middle: nothing Bottom: a government building Transitions to Slide 2: Top: bunch of people figures Middle: capitalized letters BLOCKCHAIN Bottom: a government building The narrative was that the BLOCKCHAIN will solve this. Somehow. What 'this' is was left unclear. No challenging from the audience. On 6/23/16, 8:04, Jaromil wrote: I think the "blockchain" with all buzz related to it is indeed a socially interesting phenomenon at the base of popularization of digital technology. For many reasons. It is the main base for "de-politicizing" Bitcoin. It is also an incredible swamp of bad and quickly hacked together code, for obvious reasons bound to opportunity and puerile enthusiasm. But also because anything that has to do with the enormous bubble of computer industry nowadays deals only with the so called "computer sciences" discipline, rather than with # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
On Tue, 21 Jun 2016, Andreas Broeckmann wrote: > http://www.mikro.in-berlin.de/wiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=154 > > glitch or premonition? Interesting http://bb9.berlinbiennale.de/participants/simon-denny/ I think the "blockchain" with all buzz related to it is indeed a socially interesting phenomenon at the base of popularization of digital technology. For many reasons. It is the main base for "de-politicizing" Bitcoin. It is also an incredible swamp of bad and quickly hacked together code, for obvious reasons bound to opportunity and puerile enthusiasm. But also because anything that has to do with the enormous bubble of computer industry nowadays deals only with the so called "computer sciences" discipline, rather than with computational linguistics, for instance. So, you know... it's all so neo-lib :^) This is my favorite commentary to what happened https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O5fdMFKEC0 but I'm afraid it won't be so funny when the real bubble bursts... ciao # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
just an aside: the artist Simon Denny participates in this year's 9th Berlin Biennial with a three-part installation; each part looks like (or rather, is) a trade fare-style booth for a company that is in the crypto-currency business (Ethereum, 21 Inc, and Digital Asset Holdings); together with an Ex-GDR postage stamp designer, Denny also designed ficticious stamps for these companies. I took a picture of Denny explaining the Etherium set-up during the opening days, two weeks before reality kicking in on Etherium. (In the background you can see part of the equally utopian socialist wall decoration in the hall of the former government building, Staatsratsgebäude, that faces the equally virtual reconstruction site of the Prussian royal palace...) http://www.mikro.in-berlin.de/wiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=154 glitch or premonition? -a Am 17.06.16 um 19:24 schrieb Jaromil: dear nettimers, following up the crypto-money craze on "Blockchains", the diva setup of Ethereum we-will-run-the-computer-of-the-world (and you will all be assimilated or obsoleted) left a big crater this morning (CET time) http://uk.businessinsider.com/dao-hacked-ethereum-crashing-in-value-tens-of-millions-allegedly-stolen-2016-6 (US is just waking up to it, many more articles will likely come) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
On 2016-06-19 18:15, xDxD.vs.xDxD wrote: > hi! > > >> Of course, not all humans will be out of the loop. The chosen few >> and tech elites around them (AKA 'core developers') will stay there >> and reap the benefits. The current contest is about who gets to >> stay in the loop, and the driving hope is that the unwashed masses >> will submit to it. >> > > Of course, we must also consider that "humans" were never in the > loop. When the "peer", such as in bitcoins, is a CPU, not a human > being, it is at least problematic to state that "humans are in the > loop". > > s My reading of Manuel De Landa's "War in the Age of Intelligent Machines" has convinced me that the 'Anglo' take on (technological) culture & society is that the human being is the weakest element in the chain and hence needs to be eliminated. Hence a direct line to the 'Californian Ideology', Silly Valley neo-liberlism/ anarcho-capitalism/ geek suprematism, 'culminating' in the so-called singularity and trans-humanism. Cheers to the future! p+5D! # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
hi! > Of course, not all humans will be out of the loop. The chosen few and tech > elites around them (AKA 'core developers') will stay there and reap the > benefits. The current contest is about who gets to stay in the loop, and > the driving hope is that the unwashed masses will submit to it. > Of course, we must also consider that "humans" were never in the loop. When the "peer", such as in bitcoins, is a CPU, not a human being, it is at least problematic to state that "humans are in the loop". s -- *[**MUTATION**]* *Art is Open Source *- http://www.artisopensource.net *[**CITIES**]* *Human Ecosystems Ltd* - http://human-ecosystems.com *[**NEAR FUTURE DESIGN**]* *Nefula Ltd* - http://www.nefula.com *[**RIGHTS**]* *Ubiquitous Commons *- http://www.ubiquitouscommons.org --- Professor of Near Future and Transmedia Design at ISIA Design Florence: http://www.isiadesign.fi.it/ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
There is an interesting essay on LRB: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/john-lanchester/when-bitcoin-grows-up which is worth reading in its entirety. One part ''' Yap has no metal. There’s nothing to make into coins. What the Yapese do instead is sail 250 miles to an island called Palau, where there’s a particular kind of limestone not available on their home island. They quarry the limestone, and then shape it into circular wheel-like forms with a hole in the middle, called fei. Some of these fei stones are absolutely huge, fully 12 feet across. Then they sail the fei back to Yap, where they’re used as money. The great advantage of the fei being made from this particular stone is that they’re impossible to counterfeit, because there’s none of the limestone on Yap. The fei are rare and difficult to get by definition, so they hold their value well. You can’t fake a fei. Just as you have to work to get money in a developed economy – so the money constitutes a record of labour – the fei are an unfakeable record of the labour that went into their creation. In addition, the big ones have the advantage that they’re impossible to steal. By the same token, though, they’re impossible to move, so what happens is that if you want to spend some of the money, you just agree that somebody else now owns the coin. A coin sitting outside somebody’s house can be transferred backwards and forwards as part of a series of transactions, and all that actually happens is that people change their minds about who now owns it. Everyone agrees that the money has been transferred. The real money isn’t the fei, but the idea of who owns the fei. The register of ownership, held in the community memory, is the money. ''' is a good illustration how 'work' (as in Proof of Work) has evolved from human engagement to machine engagement. Yap required certain number of man-days. One Bitcoin requires, give or take, 4000 kWh. The man-hours used in electricity production are rather low, as it's mostly rent-seeking business. It is conceivable that at some point BTC creation will require practically zero man-hours. The amusing question is what happens when humans are out of the both loops - money creation and contract enforcement. Of course, not all humans will be out of the loop. The chosen few and tech elites around them (AKA 'core developers') will stay there and reap the benefits. The current contest is about who gets to stay in the loop, and the driving hope is that the unwashed masses will submit to it. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
The premise of smart contracts ("legally incorporated programs that
are at arms length from their programmers" that "core developers"
like to blather about) is nothing new: it is to create an additional
insulating mechanism between the victims and the perpetrators, for the
benefit of the latter.
It is a wet dream of any ideology/religion to get embodied in a
mechanism, and thus get away from the critical and ugly questions. The
mechanism simply *is*, nothing to see here, move on.
So far the financialization of life only perfected the medium (money),
but the medium itself is not a sufficient barrier: the legal and moral
responsibility is still on the owners, with a threat that someone may
go to jail. The medium itself is viewed as passive and neutral - no
one yet sued cash in the vault or assets of the hedge fund. The dirty
work is still done by humans, and that is the real problem that smart
contracts solve.
Smart contracts are doable in practice. It was unthinkable several
hundred years ago that paper money or numbers in the ledger will rule
the lives of the most. Today we can totally imagine that a computer
can send a debtor to the jail, with the same de-facto automatism with
which ATM agrees or refuses to dispense cash.
This is the driving force behind investments in the Bitcoin and
related superstructures. The fact that (in theory, not in practice)
Bitcoin is extra-territorial and out of reach of jurisdictions implies
that anything implemented on top of it will have the same attributes,
so complaining about the related fraud or injustice becomes pointless.
In the reality Bitcoin is neither extra-territorial nor distributed.
There are 9 (nine) mints that matter, and coercing all their operators
to do anything the coercer wants is cheap: for $20-30MM invested in
combination of clandestine and over-the-board operations, the mint
operators will:
- split Bitcoin
- terminate Bitcoin
- eat own shit for breakfast.
- etc.
Operators are fully aware of this and thus will preemptively comply
with prospective coercer's demands.
This creates the ideal setup for fixing the problem mentioned above:
while Bitcoin and related technologies are sold as ungovernable and
impersonal (no one to complain to), they are in fact very governable
and very personal. The working analogy that comes to mind is that the
wars are OK as long as the returning body bags contain 'contractors',
not 'conscripts' (note that both words begin with 'con'.) Public which
bought that will buy execution by a program (even smaller linguistic
intervention - 'of' becomes 'by'.)
The bright side is that these constructs (architectures, programs,
machines they run on, networks that connect them) could be too complex
to be effective, and may never achieve anything close to the longevity
and security of a $20 bill. Even worse, they may perpetually require a
substantial praetorian guard to maintain (today embodied in >100K/yr
employees of the 5 monopolies), and we all know dangers of having a
substantial praetorian guard.
But then I may be underestimating creativity of thugs and stupidity of
the meek.
On 6/18/16 3:44 , Jaromil wrote:
But this is not the only problem to be noticed here.
The Verge has adopted a critical take, surfacing some of my deeper
concerns (somehow aired also at the time of the hackingteam) on how
the techno-financial industry is toxic
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/17/11965192/ethereum-theft-dao-cryptocurrency-million-stolen-bitcoin
the problem is not with youth experimenting new cool unstable stuff
and getting all excited about it. i'd even argue this should happen,
why not? it is also a known fact that hackers go through a "god
complex" period in the phylogenesis of their personality. some are
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Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
On Fri, 17 Jun 2016, Morlock Elloi wrote: > To many observers, the technological/mathematical component of this > and similar phenomena implies that there is rationality involved. > Nothing could be farther from the truth. > The religion and ideology behind these is more crude, bigoted and > crass than classical religions, exactly because it's assumed that it > is well-cloaked by the involved technology. True. There are some real bigots in there and they even respond with personal assaults to any critical pondering of the technologies they are evangelising about. But this is not the only problem to be noticed here. The Verge has adopted a critical take, surfacing some of my deeper concerns (somehow aired also at the time of the hackingteam) on how the techno-financial industry is toxic http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/17/11965192/ethereum-theft-dao-cryptocurrency-million-stolen-bitcoin The problem is not with youth experimenting new cool unstable stuff and getting all excited about it. I'd even argue this should happen, why not? It is also a known fact that hackers go through a "god complex" period in the phylogenesis of their personality. Some are even unable to get out of it in adulthood. So the trans-humanist techno-fanatics you mention may be simply seen exploiting this puerile energy: to feel young again, ignoring the looming necrotization of the economic-body they are into (and they wish to live forever...). this is what I call ecstasy: swallow a pill to feel all cuddly-lovey excited in the middle of an Euro-trash decadent party. It works. And you may even find some puber for some couch-petting, how exciting. But back to the hang-over, the empasse is not easy to describe. We've had years of "austerity measures" affecting all sorts of labour classes, mashing down the middle class, lowering demand on all markets, while leaving intact the tainted networks of trust that are still supposed to move capitals for "innovation", "entrepreneurship" and "development". The intoxicated players beyond these mega-capitals (a too big to fail industry that has only grown after the bail-outs) are ready for every new saturday night pub-crawl opportunity to imbue their own perception of the "singularity" process that is going to fix everything pseudo-magically. These people are mandated to "distribute the wealth", plan investments, grow-hack the hell out of kibbutzim-like student-house-startups that are supposed to save the world. They are completely alienated. Alienation is the main product of financiarization. At the other end of the spectrum, workers are alienated from the mode of production, while being told they will be obsoleted by the advent of the robots: smarter better and more efficient. Until then, we'll just call humans "artificial-artificial intelligence" (tm by Amazon, Mech Turks) This is not just a grim and mildly entertaining narrative on the late-capitalist techno-era, its not a titillating dystopic scenario. Its actually provoking real damages. In terms of money, obviously. And today we don't need to explain that. But again also in terms of integrity for policy making processes and networks of trust. I've been in EU commission meetings in Bruxelles since a few years now. There is a solid siege of fanatic lobbyists for Ethereum, you wouldn't believe how many enemies I'm making by writing this now. Its actually amazing how many assets are in place, its almost like Libanon 15 years ago, but focused on "tech innovation". Armies of shillers are shopping the blockchain around as if it would be a magic wand to solve all economic problems, while in that context is just a new device for financial institutions to shovel their "Truth" down the throats of debtors. What problems is addressing this tech, really? And who is this austerity for, really? I've seen seasoned and reasonable engineers silently slipping away from marketing campaigns and trying to touch me to see if I was real, knowing I know some of the backstage secrets of this puerile show, shy in asking me "what is really this blockchain thing? does it deserves such a big show?". No, it doesn't, nor it deserves so much investment per-se. In any case, a clear political agenda needs to be put forward, that is *not* about providing banks some decadent R&D paid by public money (dah!) This army of finance-industry-doped neo-trolls won't stop. Their attitude is almost slapstick comedy by now. They see a clear opportunity in manipulating the senile dementia and social fears of state-capitalism functionaries to the advantage of big banking conglomerates. And they are fanatics, as you point out, frantically selling immaginary uses of their products depicting techno visions of rebellious tools turned disruptive innovation under the bankers control, private blockchains like legal absynth, solving highly-responsible tasks without having to worry about human errors. This is the collective masturbation of the 1+5% inside their echo chambers full of deca
Re: Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
To many observers, the technological/mathematical component of this and similar phenomena implies that there is rationality involved. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The religion and ideology behind these is more crude, bigoted and crass than classical religions, exactly because it's assumed that it is well-cloaked by the involved technology. On 6/17/16, 10:24, Jaromil wrote: this toy?! now put your seatbelt on and be ready to know that *banksters are on ecstasy*. So much of the bailed out financial sector has been busy on it and investing it. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)
dear nettimers, following up the crypto-money craze on "Blockchains", the diva setup of Ethereum we-will-run-the-computer-of-the-world (and you will all be assimilated or obsoleted) left a big crater this morning (CET time) http://uk.businessinsider.com/dao-hacked-ethereum-crashing-in-value-tens-of-millions-allegedly-stolen-2016-6 (US is just waking up to it, many more articles will likely come) An exploited bug in DAO contracts (the trans-humanist dream who wanted to run automatic contracts because humans are too stupid and too slow) burned more than 60 milion worth of dollars as ETH started flowing into a mysterious account. Those whom I have spoken to about the issue may remember: I've always discouraged from stepping on ETH grounds, not just because of all the fanfare and the me-me-me shilling grounds, but because there is little reasoning on *computational language* in its implementation. A few other people share this opinion, the very well respectable Bitcoin developer Greg Maxwell for instance points out here https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4oij7v/oleg_andreev_on_twitter_vitalik_tries_to_switch/d4cvjo1 that "It's the recursive call issue, -- ultimately it's a design flaw in the EVM that makes it very hard to write safe code. Even many of their examples were vulnerable to it and similar forms." as well bright researchers like Meredith point out in a twit now https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/743770126156128256 "Told you gas wasn't sufficient to keep Ethereum secure. Turns out, program semantics matter!" and more bits worth reading here https://medium.com/@beautyon_/the-fundamental-problems-with-ethereum-408c420849f0#.vjttpujex Also for the literates, here you'll find a pretty good analysis of the flaws http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/16/scanning-live-ethereum-contracts-for-bugs/ Now I really hope you don't mind me cashing on some "I told'ya"s. It is anyway not why I'm writing. I'm writing to try answer another question, curious of your opinion: how the hell 60 and more millions (still counting) were stuffed into this toy?! now put your seatbelt on and be ready to know that *banksters are on ecstasy*. So much of the bailed out financial sector has been busy on it and investing it. 3days ago the news recited: "R3 Issues Buterin's "Ethereum Platform Review" Papers--Opportunities and Challenges for Private and Consortium Blockchains" https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/r-issues-buterin-s-ethereum-platform-review-papers-opportunities-and-challenges-for-private-and-consortium-blockchains-1465943849 Ethereum was in fact funded with early chip-ins from Goldman Sachs and grew later as the rather sloppy brainchild of a growing consortium of Banks which evidently needed some excuse to dump the bailouts of tax payers into some sort of "tech innovation" gig. Yet another one? here: "ING Bank Participates in R3's Comparative Test of Distributed Ledgers and Cloud Platforms" https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ing-bank-participates-in-r-s-comparative-test-of-distributed-ledgers-and-cloud-platforms-1457543723 Oh BTW Peter Thiel is also involved. Just sayin' So what is this R3 about really? R3 and consortium member banks Barclays, BMO Financial Group, Credit Suisse, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC, Natixis, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, UniCredit and Wells Fargo each connected on an R3-managed private peer-to-peer distributed ledger, underpinned by Ethereum technology and hosted on a virtual private network in Microsoft Azure, the public cloud platform offering Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) in an accelerated development environment. http://r3cev.com/press/2016/1/20/r3-brings-eleven-major-global-financial-institutions-together-on-a-cloud-based-distributed-ledger And here for a full list: The banks involved in the project include Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BBVA, BMO Financial Group, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, CIBC, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Citi, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Danske Bank, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Macquarie Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, National Australia Bank, Natixis, Nomura, Nordea, Northern Trust, OP Financial Group, Scotiabank, State Street, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, SEB, Societe Generale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, UBS, UniCredit, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and Westpac Banking Corporation. So. well. good luck with the too big to fail! seems like they are burning their last neurons in crypto-ecstasy, why should you trust them then? We need re-hab, not bailouts! ciao -- ~.,_ Denis Roio aka Jaromilhttp://Dyne.org think &do tank "+. CTO and co-founder free/open source developers @) ⚷ crypto κρυπτο крипто गुप्त् 加密 האנוסים المشفره @@) GnuPG: 6113D89C A825C5CE DD02C872 73B35DA5 4ACB7D10 (@@@) opmsg:73a8e097a038d82b 8afb4c05804bda0d 281b3880fbc19b88 #
