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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • While there’s some far-end “let’s eliminate cash” sentiments, a lot of the selling point of a CBDC is simply faster, cheaper settlement than current private platforms, so there’s a nonmalovent position.

    Many central banks are pushing for the CBDC as a commercial or interbank-only thing in large part because if end consumers could just have an CBDC demand account with the Federal Reserve/Bank of England/ECB, it would squeeze out commercial banks.







  • I’m surprised there isn’t more of a crowdsourced solution-- community maintained block/allow lists and pluggable tools.

    Part of the reason filters suck right now is that they’re sold to turboprudes and people pushing compliance solutions that will placate litigious turboprudes. So you get blocking all of Wikipedia and .edu/.gov because three pages have an anatomical diagram of a breast. The kids are frustrated, normal parents have to keep unblocking legit stuff, and nobody wins.

    If you could pick from easily managed lists sponsored by groups you personally trusted, with responsive appeals systems, people might be more willing to use them.

    The ad-blocker ecosystem has a lot of precedent for how to work this stuff.



  • IMO, the real use case for PayPal was really on the seller side.

    When it was 2002 and you weren’t a major business but just wanted to sell three old CDs on eBay or offer dog haberdashery online, it was by far the simplest way to accept a credit-card funded transaction.

    We’re still not a lot better there in 2025. Even with more modern platforms, you can’t really get from zero to accepting cards directly in 15 minutes.




  • I could see repurpose from subway equipment, since it’s already powered and usually set up for short trains. America doesn’t have too many above-ground EMU (electric multiple-unit) models to work with; the 50-year-old Metroliner comes to mind, and some Pennsylvania Railroad predecessors.

    The infamous British Rail Pacers were effectively bus bodies with flanged eheels, so that sort of retooling has precedent.

    Are you thinking battery, third rail, or cantenary? The latter two are much more infrastructure heavy so you might not see them at the outer edges of a network.

    Locomotive hauled trains might be another viable option, one small battery-powered engine (see Norfolk Southern 999) and one or two ancient coaches.


  • What problem does CSD solve? I’d think “some apps look and work differently” is a pretty bad tradeoff for “I want to cram custom stuff in the title bar which was more or less universally treated as owned-by-the-system for the first 35 years of GUIs at least?”

    GTK/GNOME seem to be making themselves actively hostile towards customization, which seems a great way to lose enthusiasts.