By the way, I don't have the depth of experience or team to build something like this in a way that I would feel happy with, so feel free to please use this idea if you think it is good.
Note from the about page: "We are not a registered charity, in the sense that we do not issue tax deductible receipts. " Seems still worthwhile to raise awareness.
Although bitcoin could be used for some bad things, but also there are some (501c) charities that accept bitcoin too,
- give directly
- redcross (used to at least)
- water project
- ..
(there are at least two others but I forget)
So hypothetically (assuming it would pass like sec / whatever regulations) at the right point in time you could make like a coinbase type thing that
- buys $30 of bitcoin
- automatically watches some exchange API until it appreciates to 'desired amount in US / GBP / Whatever currency you use'
- makes the donation automatically at say 10x the value
- gets 'the actual registered charity' to send you a non-deductible receipt for that amount, (non-deductible since you no longer 'have control of the coin once it's in the app', which would is essentially the price you pay for getting the increased amount of 'social-benefit', since it's 'going to hurt' to see the potential missed profit, even though the alternative would be to lose the $30 at the earlier time in just a 'tethered' amount)
There is a 'large benefit' to automating / appifying this process to people in that, putting such a system together in one place could lessen the dangers in a manual process of doing this like: lost receipts, hacked exchanges, constantly watching prices, actually dealing with crypto.
In any case, my point is that, given that there is probably 'some good potential to bitcoin (although it might require a team of some creative / dedicated thinking at the right time)' it seems that there might be some benefit from viewing it less as an entrapment / tracking device, and more as a tool for social benefit, and thus making a strong push in the warnings / regulations area to get people on the social benefit track of it's potential use rather than the negative aspects of it. To restate: you have the choice of either guiding bitcoin use towards being a law enforcement tool, or towards being a social benefit / solve world problems tool. I think the recent SEC exchange warnings thing is probably a step towards pushing it in the right direction... (potentially there are some deep sci-fi strategic reasons for viewing crypto-coins in a certain way in terms of desired world progress in a certain direction, which would be interesting to think about).
I was specifically responding to your comment "Responsible, ethical, and careful developments of dangerous technology, even if the danger promises to be reduced compared to the norm in some future iteration, is a must" and not responding to the topic of Uber or specifically self-driving cars.
This is commonly called 'attempting to saving someones butt with a reasonable explanation, rather than trying to make a quick buck / whatever to their detriment.'
With the level of tech commonly posted on this website (and in general), there seem to be many suprising dangers that the average lurker is not going to know about that the experienced developer / whatever will know about. It seems better to seek out and point out (if non-obvious): 'be careful about x,y,z' rather than hide such warnings in obscure blog posts / hope people will understand some kind of implicit message in whatever (especially since some times evidence can be conflicting). A good example of this is the BIS export warning for crypto (assuming in the US), I've talked in the past to several 'experienced' blockchain people who had no idea about this, but if you browse around on enough crypto github pages you can eventually find it.
Assuming interoperability to be a good thing, then, coding something like a c# translation of this is a stimulating and useful intellectual exercise relative to like reading a book or solving a prescribed math problem. Assuming coding problems aren't like fossil fuel for jobs or something, and society hasn't yet reached the state where we can just neglect technology and say 'good enough,' given that (at least according to people I see while locomoting around town), there are still diseases, disabilities (physical and psychological), aging, puns, death, overpopulation, homelessness, variety of experience (I don't know what the correct word for this is, but something like 'non-crunchy-multitude-of-choice'), etc. all which may have solutions with sufficiently advanced technology (with the caveat that it may be like a pandora's box).
(You could probably superficially post-justify a solution to these kind of problems in society by strapping an RC radio to everyones head and saying 'karma', but I would guess you can't do that without the being enacting this breaking large parts of the social contract, and essentially ridding life of substance, e.g. 'this thing happened to you because you ate a fish when you were a child, and that fish had a family, and so, relatively, your brain is like a fish-size (lets say chicken because birds are actually pretty smart in the animal hierarchy) to this AI we've constructed, and thus it's eating you, and so therefore, its karmically balanced (that's not really a solution is it, I mean it is, but it's like a military tit for tat solution (even if done subtly) rather than a diplomatic / medical type solution, which would provide more leeway for things like basic fight-or-flight response of humans / miscommunication / speed of actual human thought / etc., which doesn't really fit in the tit-for-tat model)' ). Wow I wrote freaking thesis here (and I didn't really put that long of thought into it, so judge as such, like git commit 1 of an more revised thought).
I'm not sure if you are joking, but it does seem that more interoperability is usually a good thing.. (especially for something like a jpeg decoder - maybe it's less useful to have a toaster interface smoothly with some coffee beans)
Ah, well the reply was stated somewhat jokingly, but something along the lines of: if you are investing in a lot other peoples ideas / projects, it sort of implies you are not stingy (sp?) with money / afraid to take a risk with your money (or something like that)... (this assumes that it is an 'honest' investment).
Well I guess the 'afaik' in my answer was wrong in this case, it was based on recollection of the last time I held a nature in my hand, and a comparison with a sort of definition as listed here: https://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/scholarly-vs-po....
Sorry to unjustly disparage nature, however, it does not discount the quote I lifted from the post, which is still a valid point.
Afaik nature has good stuff, but it's not like a 'research journal' it's more popular stuff. A quote from the article: "There are only a handful of studies out there that have already attempted to look at this, and they came to wildly different conclusions." So, although I didn't look into this more deeply, it seems to me there is wide room to not take this popular article as 'full confirmation'.