Countering the Crypto Lobbyists:

Countering the Crypto Lobby

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Crypto skepticism is not a homogeneous school of thought, and there is no central doctrine or leaders to this movement other than a broad north star of working to minimize fraud and protect the public from undue financial harm. There are crypto skeptics who think there might be some redeeming qualities in some crypto assets, and there are those who want it all to “die in a fire” and everywhere in between. The guiding principle of this letter is to find a middle way that at least most people can agree on and phrase it in a manner such that it can be best understood by our policymakers, who are deeply confused by even minimal jargon and technical obscurantism.

Blockchain is Meaningless

Blockchain is a meaningless term. This is an enormous problem because if we aim to build policy concerning financial assets built on top of blockchains, we need to have a shared vocabulary about what we’re seeking to regulate.

There is no universal definition of blockchain. …

Permissioned Blockchains

No issue seems to draw contention amongst technologists more than the issue of so-called “permissioned blockchains.” It is a highly ambiguous term that is obfuscated by marketing jargon and where the boundaries between it and traditional relational databases are incredibly unclear. Many so-called “permissioned blockchains” are simply relational databases with perhaps some additional software or marketing layered on top. … 

Permissioned blockchains go under various names ranging from private blockchains, permissioned blockchains, enterprise blockchains, distributed ledger technology, and ledger databases. The three most prominent examples of this appear to be:

1. Amazon QLDB
2. Microsoft Azure SQL Database ledger
3. Hyperledger Fabric

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Cryptocurrencies

The word “cryptocurrency” itself is also a misnomer because, as any economist will point out, these tokens are financial assets not currencies. Nevertheless crypto assets aren’t a homogeneous group of products, and talking about the entire space in full generality is fraught with ambiguity. Broadly speaking there two buckets of assets, speculative tokens and non-speculative tokens. … 

We Want Our Words Back

Crypto used to mean cryptography, a branch of study at the intersection of mathematics and computer science. Web 3.0 used to mean the semantic web, a version of the internet in which all the world’s knowledge was organized into a searchable graph. Now both words have been co-opted to mean highly risky speculative investments and frauds and as marketing buzzwords to obscure intent.

A great many researchers and working software engineers don’t like this abuse of computer science terms to peddle risky investments. We’re tired of this, and many of us feel this is a blight on our profession and it needs to stop.

Grassroot Lobbying

Technologists need to be involved in more grassroots lobbying on these issues. I’m certainly going to devote some of my life to this work, but I can’t do it alone. We have to work within our existing democratic institutions and with other like-minded people in the law and finreg community to tackle the problems because crypto is a problem that the software community created, and it’s one that we inevitably have to have a hand in reigning in. Although we might differ slightly on the end regulatory state, I have high faith in our democratic processes and institutions to arrive at a solution that balances the public interests with a legitimate desire for responsible financial innovation, and I think we can all agree we can do better than the hot mess we’re in right now.

Apple Passkeys:

At WWDC, Apple just announced Passkeys, their implementation of the FIDO protocols that aim to replace passwords. In Apple’s case, this capability will be available with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, probably this fall. The other vendors are doubtless planning similar releases in a similar timeline.

Dan Moren from Six Colors has a post that gives a nice explanation of Passkeys and its operation by endusers. If you’re an Apple user with some or all of your passwords stored in the Apple iCloud Keychain, nothing much will change: you’ll authenticate with a fingerprint or face ID and a cryptographic exchange takes place between your device and the remote site to verify you. You can even use one device to log into another. Take a look at Moren’s post for the details.

(Via Irreal)

What I want Apple to do to enhance this is to extend this and other privacy efforts backwards so older Macs and other devices can take advantage.

For example, I have a 2012 Mac Mini that doesn’t support Apple Pay natively. I can use my more modern iOS devices to approve purchases made on that machine. But it doesn’t support Hide My Email or other privacy mechanisms.

Get on this, Apple!

Hamilton County commissioners cite lack of respect, discipline following Saturday shooting | Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Hamilton County commissioners Wednesday largely attributed local gun violence to a lack of respect among the county’s youth.

It’s not thoughts and prayers, but equally useless.

Commissioner Steve Highlander R-Ooltewah, added that authority figures have become afraid to discipline children and that shootings could potentially be decreased if they begin to install discipline beginning at a young age.

“It’s not just Hamilton County or this city, it’s all across the country,” Highlander said. “And people have become afraid to discipline children. Children cannot learn when others are disrupting the class.”

To what “authority figures” Highlander refers is unclear. Maybe teachers? Maybe school administraters?

Imagine if the “authority figures” in need of respect were government officials, elected and appointed, and the ones in need of discipline were gun manufacturers, sellers, the NRA, those who feel a need to have a personal arsenal, and so on.

I’m old enough that I went through NRA training as a kid where the goal was to teach how a weapon is a privilege, not a right, and how it needs to be treated with respect (there’s that word again) or else it will be taken away from you.