News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:ZCash (formerly Zerocash/Zerocoin) technology preview by Karunamon on Friday February 05, 2016 @04:00PM (#11044580)
You're going to have to convince people that adopting this tool is better for them than what they have now for it to stand a chance of adoption.

From a purely selfish standpoint, I would not want to use this system, because I don't want advertisers, insurance companies, malcontents, stalkers, debt collectors, busybodies, three-letter-agencies, data brokers, or any other random with an internet connection to know that I spent money at a hypothetical STD clinic or received money for participating in a scientific study.

This plan introduces a huge number of of unknown unknowns, where right now, we've got a pretty good idea of how widespread the corruption is, the forms it generally takes, and what, if anything, we can do about it. And since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I can look backwards to see how behavioral data is abused right now, and say with complete certainty that it would be abused more under this system.

No thanks.

Re:ZCash (formerly Zerocash/Zerocoin) technology preview by natrius on Friday February 05, 2016 @04:26PM (#11044761)
I agree that conservatism has virtues. Change does introduce unknown unknowns. I think there's a good strategy for handling them: when people do undesirable things, sanction them.

Change is inevitable. Zcash is here, so regulation is dead. Conservatism isn't an option: we have to choose how to adapt to change. I think merit capitalism is the right choice.

Thanks for your questions! Good talk.