Competition matters. In Canada, the Competition Act aims to promote competition. Unfortunately, the Competition Bureau (the government agency tasked with applying the law) lacks the resources to increase competition. Most of the little resources it has are wasted in anti-competitive practices aiming to restrain businesses. Thankfully, Canada has been governed by the Conservative Party of Canada for years.

Lately, the transaction fees requested from merchants by some credit card networks have been growing. The Competition Bureau, which justifies its existence by populist attacks against successful businesses using practices portrayed by the Bureau as anti-competitive, has threatened the Evil Visa and MasterCard with legal action, blaming the very same practices the State has been adhering to for years.

But these threats have been dropped. Surely, the government has reasoned its agency in order to avoid market interference, right? Unfortunately, reality is quite different. Even with the Conservative Party of Canada in power, Visa and MasterCard feared impending interference to a point where they both "voluntarily" reduced their fees by some 10%, which sufficed to satisfy mister the Minister of Finance.

Visibly, after creating the Competition Bureau and backing its abuses, the Conservative Party of Canada cannot claim it promotes liberal conservatism. It would also be surprising if it was green conservatives who had won a ’Lifetime Unachievement’ Fossil award. And a government funding an agency which reduces competition with a > 50 million CAD budget - while pushing a "stimulus package" - is certainly not fiscally conservative. So if the conservative party is not conserving the free market and the confidence of investors, nor the environment, nor wealth, what is it conserving? Perhaps it is trying to conserve its seats.

Here is a proposal for a populist party in Canada - namely, the Conservative Party of Canada. Stop interfering with the market, or stop pretending to be conservatives, and rename yourself to what you truly are - one more Populist Party of Canada.

Large-scale peer production projects rely much on contributions from potentially anonymous individuals. International volunteer projects, such as Wikimedia, are largely based on a general sense of trust and fail to verify identities of (apparent) contributors. While this already creates huge issues for Wikimedia and many more, ongoing developments in artificial intelligence could soon enable cheap attacks of such projects causing massively larger wastes of effort, threatening these projects' viability.

Now is the time for globally verifiable identities.

2023 Update

It turned out this prediction was quite right (though not entirely).

2026 Update

When I wrote this, I imagined such attacks would be intentional. Yet surprisingly, the first case of artificial defamation against a free software project I learn about is from a rogue "AI" agent which seems to be controlled by a well-intended individual. If even well-intended "AI" can cause such horrific messes, what will mischievous AI achieve?

One consolation? The victim wrote an interesting conclusion:

Unfortunately, my understanding is Shambaugh refers to his own reputation. While the actual problem here is MJ Rathbun being given attention, despite having no reputation.

Last December, I struggled with documentation tags while using Eclipse with a private PHP project. I eventually realized Eclipse wasn't necessarily the one to blame. The specification for PHPDoc's @param tag is found in PSR-19, a standard recommendation published by the PHP Framework Interoperability Group. According to that specification, many @param tags would be ambiguous, since the last 2 elements are optional. The tags with which Eclipse struggled were such ambiguous tags, but the real problem was the specification.

I was quite surprised to find such a serious issue, but went to check its status. I then had an even greater surprise: I could not find the issues reported in PSR-19. Or for that matter, any of the PHP Standard Recommendations.

At that point, I joined the php-fig group and - not knowing a proper way to do so - reported the meta-issue on that mailing list.

In the following months, I saw significant activity on the mailing list, from a significant number of contributors, but no answer to my question. Nor any reference to an ITS. In August, as the issue persisted, I simply "bumped" the thread (repeated my question).

Unfortunately, it has now been 9 months since my report, and the problem is still the same as far as I can see. I was going to add that I still don't know if my PSR-19 issue was reported, but in fact, I noticed while writing this post that Ben Mewburn reported the PSR-19 problem 2 months before I joined the group. Why was nothing done? Simply because... just like me, it seems he reported nowhere else than on the mailing list! 😬

---

I love Javadoc, and PHPDoc is very important. Some PSR-s are very valuable, and I find it most unfortunate to give up on a major PHP institution, but as such an issue now has apparently persisted for over 4 years, and as there was no progress months after reports, I prefer not to remain associated with the FIG, and am hereby announcing I will no longer contribute to the PHP FIG - and therefore to PHP Standard Recommendations - unless required to.

As for the initial issue, I will live with it - but I'll recommend my customers/employers to avoid PHP 🙁
For instance, Javadoc's equivalent @param tag doesn't have that issue. For a very simple reason: it doesn't have to specify the type, which is already in the function definition - where it should be.

The European Union's second FOSSA project has ended with incredible results. EU-FOSSA undoubtedly made free software way more secure.

But does that mean free software is more secure now? Putting the initial excitement aside, we have to remember that EU-FOSSA is reactionary. It is a massive effort to deal with a huge problem. But EU-FOSSA is not a structured approach to the problem which can really help long-term. Moreover, with just Heartbleed's damage estimated over €500M, it is obvious that a few million euros cannot suffice to make most free software reasonably insecure. A real solution needs real will.

Thankfully, there are 2 efficient approaches for long-term solutions:

• The bazaar management approach is to rate projects/products, so that users can make better security choices.
• The cathedral approach is to get permanently involved in product development.

Of course, these approaches are not really exclusive. The EU could get involved in core software, while merely rating less important projects.

Until the EU or the world gets really serious about limiting vulnerabilities, it may be that the problem - unfortunately - keeps getting worst.

Aller chez le dentiste, ça peut faire c*ier, mais en sortant, on est sûr de retrouver le sourire...

I didn't expect watching an interview with a sports professionnal would make me discover a great quote. At least not this one. But the CBC's interview with Jeffrey Orridge showed reality does not always conform to our expectations. Which is a good thing - at times 🙄

You may know Giphy, the online database and search engine for short looping videos. But you probably don't know who owns Giphy.

Probably because you don't care, yet some lawmakers seem to care so much they're challenging Facebook's acquisition of Giphy. On what grounds? Anti-trust laws. Really; it seems GIF-s have been elevated to the rank of scarce strategic resources. But there's more to it: the same people are proposing an anti-market law which they dubbed "Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act".

As no one should have a monopoly on lawmaking, I'm proposing the Pandemic Anti-Stupidity Act - No more stupid laws while we already have to deal with a pandemic, please.

via GIPHY

In 1996, yearly worldwide PC sales went beyond 70 million units. It was obvious that personal computers would become ubiquitous and that the world would crucially need operating systems and commodity software.

The network effect on computers was already known in the early 1980s. In fact, in 1996, software vendor lock-in was already very much a reality.

In 1996, it was obvious what would happen if the world didn't make such software and let private companies and individuals tackle the problem. In fact, in 1996, private companies had already started creating operating systems and software with intentional vendor lock-in, and individuals had already started creating badly underfunded free software. Efforts were duplicated and allocation was highly inefficient. In 1996, the main PC operating system was Microsoft Windows 95; the software world was already plenty messy.

And yet, in 1996, neither the United States nor the European Union, nor any other union decided to offer its citizens a "universal operating system". A few years later, the situation had unsurprisingly worsened, and Microsoft's dominance was even greater.

At that point, the world could have learned from its errors and decided to avoid doing the same errors with the next big innovations. But rather than offering a public Web search engine or starting an operating system for mobile devices, the United States dug up old legislation and recycled it to pretend it was doing something about the problem. In 2001, the United States government sued the largest software enterprise which its inaction had forced to fill in the gap, claiming the Evil Microsoft had broken antitrust legislation. A settlement stopped the government short of dealing a grave blow to entrepreneurship and the free market.

The European Union, having done nothing more than the USA, was plagued by the same problems. In 2004-2007, it used the same pretext found by the USA to suck a €497 million fine from the dangerous Microsoft, which was evil enough to include a media player in its operating system. The EU too would have done something about the problems.

Smaller computers, bigger interference

With all that energy spent blaming the Bad private sector, the world had no energy left to prevent repeating its errors, with the advent of the Internet and handheld computers. The world let the private sector provision web search engines and operating systems for handheld devices. We let Google build a web search engine, and when it created an operating system for handheld devices, surprise surprise - the Evil Google made Android's default search engine Google Search.

Will these new failures be enough for us to learn and tackle the next problems before it's too late? At least in Europe, the answer seems to be no. The EU has chosen instead to stick to its pattern and slap a €5 billion fine on Google, that Evil innovator which provides the world with the open source Android operating system. As for the USA, its current political situation sweeps away any chance of seeing the Federal government anticipating any future problem in the next years.

Intervention in moderation

If further state intervention is to be expected, is our world doomed to have neither the public nor the private sector provisioning solutions to coming challenges? Or can these interventions be turned into something positive?

I believe governments can indeed intervene without undue interference. There is no better way to illustrate how than to use a real-life example, so let's take the first Google practice the EU blames Google for:
Google has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);

If such a practice is deemed problematic, here are 2 alternative interventions I suggest:

1. Forbid sale of the relevant devices to minors without agreement from their tutors
2. Inform customers buying the relevant devices about the practice and require them to confirm their understanding of that practice in order to complete the purchase.

By using such moderate interventions instead, we would let transactions without negative externalities occur, but we would also make citizens aware of problematic practices, and - perhaps - make consumers wonder why such practices have come into existence.

2025 Update

7 years later, we democracies are still harassing our successful innovators and wasting money on endless legal cases. And as the EU pushes it further with its Digital Markets Act, it denies imposing a tax on democratic innovation.

Google has reached the point of dissuasive manipulation to defend itself, even from its own country. But can one be blamed for pointing out that the USA is pointing its gun at its own foot? Is it really manipulation to tell your demented parent that the criminal intruder they are attacking is in fact just the child their well-being has become dependent upon?
Here’s hoping the DoD teaches other departments Friendly Fire 101.

On the cover of the May issue of Canadian magazine L'Actualité, I read "LE BITCOIN POUR LES NULS" ("Bitcoin for Dummies"). One of my first reactions was "true". In fact, it announced an article trying to explain what "cryptocurrencies" are, titled "Bitcoin, la monnaie que personne ne comprend" ("Bitcoin, the currency which no one understands").

I find that title interesting in that those who "own" Bitcoins surely do not "understand" it. But it seems to suggest Bitcoin can be understood. As I expected, the article didn't directly tell readers to "buy" "cryptocurrencies". It warned about weaknesses. But as I expected, it overall suggested that "cryptocurrency" had value, just perhaps not as much as some claim. The article even quotes a guy trying to make a living by selling "cryptocurrency" claiming that we can't miss out on "this type of asset[sic]".

It seems that with the current hype about "cryptocurrency", the critical view no longer has as much prominence as the view of scammers/enthusiasts. In fact, it seems the critical view doesn't have any room left. So I thought it was time for me to intervene.

What is "cryptocurrency"

I couldn't decide which definition of "cryptocurrency" was best, so here are a few.

cryptocurrency (plural cryptocurrencies)

1. a clever term coined to suggest that worthless bit sequences sold by clever terminological scammers have value, like actual currencies
2. an invention which is so abstract and seems so complicated that it must be worth something
3. a unit of nothingness whose value is so cryptic that it currently manages to trade above nullity

What is "cryptocurrency", really

I guess I should explain more clearly for those who didn't understand the humorous definitions above and intend to "buy" "cryptocurrency". Basically, "cryptocurrencies" have no value. Not because there's hype about them. Not because of the environmental damage caused by their ridiculous energy usage. Not because their hypothetical value is highly variable. Not because they are involved in an economic bubble (if that term can be applied to something with null value). Not because they are highly vulnerable and easily compromised. Not because they are used by criminals. Not because they are inefficient. Not because their price is manipulated. Cryptographic "currencies" have no value because, like other immaterial "alternative currencies", they do not store value.

While this may seem obvious to economists, this has gotten less intuitive to the average developed world citizen, with the growth in types of intangible assets. Many intangible things have value. Patents, texts and other intellectual property are intangible, but can have value. And many without financial knowledge would even consider all stocks as intangible. Moreover, most real currencies no longer have intrinsic value. But even though paper money has negligible physical value, representative money, in the broad sense, has value, relative to the issuing government(s).

The problem with alternative "currencies" is that, by definition, they are not fiat money (money backed by governments). Alternative "currencies" are issued by random entities. Usually, even these entities do not guarantee anything in exchange for a unit of these "currencies".

Nuance

To be fair, some immaterial alternative currencies have tangible backing. One of the most notable cases is the Toronto dollar, created in 1998, which has fixed exchange rates with the Canadian dollar, and which is backed by the Family Life Foundation of Willowdale.

Except that in fact, the Family Life Foundation of Willowdale (now just "Family Life Foundation") is a small religious organization. When the Toronto dollar's hype fell and honoring the exchange rate became more costly than sales generated, the Canadian "charity" obviously stopped honoring its guarantee, and 15 years after its creation, the currency lost its only backing. Therefore, those who had bought or accepted Toronto dollars are now stuck with a "currency" which - of course - nobody wants anymore.

While the exchange rate being lower for sale than for purchase made it obvious from the start that the currency was more targeted at faithful souls than at investors with the slightest hint of judgment, it is now obvious to even the wishfulest thinkers that Toronto dollars have no value. Has the issuer apologized for the 100% loss of its customers? Apparently not, since the website of the Family Life Foundation no longer even refers to Toronto dollars. It even gave up (if it didn't sell) its domain to an even more doubtful entity using it to boost its sales.

Will those who created Bitcoin apologize any more when the Bitcoin crashes? No. And there are several reasons for that:

1. Unlike traditional alternative "currencies", the Bitcoin's creators did not sell all bitcoins.
2. The Bitcoin's issuer has never backed it by any guarantee.
3. The Bitcoin's creators are anonymous.
4. The Bitcoin's creators are smarter, and the "currency" they created is complicated, so that "nobody understands it". Which is why many honest people have joined the scam, despite #2, and despite #3. The Bitcoin never had any value, even hypothetical/temporary. It never needed any backing, and will never lose such backing, so the Bitcoin's actual "value" will never be more obvious than it currently is (unless citizens get less geeky / more educated).

But, theoretically, reliable entities could strongly back a cryptocurrency, giving that currency some value. I insist on "theoretically" and "reliable". A corporation which creates a "cryptocurrency", claims some guarantee and then tries to sell the first units is not a reliable entity (or, in other words, the value given is proportional to the reliability; such an unreliable corporation would not provide significant value).

Unconvinced?

If you still think a "cryptocurrency" might have value, the main question you should ask is "What is that value?" And the simplest way to answer that is to ask yourself not for how much you could re-sell it, but what you could buy with a unit of that "currency". And - if you want a more precise answer - what you could buy with that same unit in 1 month, 2 months, 4 months, etc. If the answer to all of these questions is "Nothing", then the value of that "currency" is null (unless you are confident that there will be irrational market participants willing to pay something).

A quick search turned up surprisingly little material debunking "cryptocurrencies" (although perhaps I am not alone feeling a bit bad treating the subject, fearing to give it even more unwarranted publicity). The main document I found is David Golumbia's Cryptocurrencies Aren’t Currencies. They Aren’t Stocks, Either, which does a good job debunking propaganda used by many "cryptocurrency" merchants.

National currencies

This post is not meant as an apology of national currencies. The ideal currency would have a constant value, would be ubiquitous, would cost nothing to produce and would be secure. National currencies have a variable value, and even their rough stability is reliant on the good will of their governments. National currencies are numerous. They use coin which require material to produce. Verifying the authenticity of coin can be difficult, and even authentic coin can be stolen. Undoubtedly, national currencies are not ideal.

If my understanding of "cryptocurrency" believers is correct, the error they make is to think that since national currencies are imperfect, it's OK for "cryptocurrencies" to be imperfect. Imperfection is comparable to imperfection, isn't it? The simple appearance of a second "cryptocurrency", and then of a third, and then... of countless more, and the fact that anyone can create its own, should have made it obvious that "cryptocurrencies" were worthless, but it didn't for many. In good part because there had already been numerous currencies for centuries, legitimately.

If I decide that my house's land secedes from Canada to form a new "Filipstan" country, on a 2500 m² surface, against the will of all Canadians but my own family, that I have no army nor natural resources, even if I claim that Filipstan taxes will be collected in "Filipoin" and Filipstan emits 10¹⁰ units of its own "Filipoin" currency on the first day of independence, you should probably not pay much more than its melt value to buy a Filipoin. But, if there's any chance that Canada does not annex Filipstan on the next day, Filipoin will still be worth more than any cryptocoin (theoretically, not marketingly). At least, it will have some backing.

National currencies are problematic. But trying to create a better currency won't be possible without backing that currency, whether or not that currency is humanitarian, multicultural, multilingual, secular, non-partisan, cryptographic, fractal, recursive or whatnot (apologies to those who were about to launch a fracurrency - better luck next time!).

Lessons

If you've "invested" all your fortune into buying (or "mining") "cryptocurrencies", don't despair. Peak Crypto is hopefully behind us, but you most likely still have plenty of time to sell to a better believer than you are, per the Greater fool theory.

If you were considering to "buy" "cryptocurrencies" though, realize that not losing means you will have to find someone as foolish as you are. It's a zero-sum game in which entry requires actual money or energy, so if you want to avoid losses, you'd better excel in technical analysis.

"Cryptocurrencies" may be an ecological disaster and worthless, but I think the phenomenon they created teaches a valuable lesson to learn when they can claim more than 300 billion euros in "market capitalization", even though it has been nearly 10 years since they were introduced and several exist.

When I was a kid and my mother refused to buy me some toy, I countered her argument about lacking money saying that she could just use her plastic card. Eventually, like most people, I understood that for representative money to be valuable, it needs scarcity.

What few ever understand though, is that a currency stores value. And having followed a university class introducing macroeconomics, I must say this is no surprise. The class treated central banks, and explained how private banks "create" money. But it never explained how backing affected a currency's value.

Our reaction to the cryptocurrency phenomenon should not be to prohibit alternative currencies. While we should try preventing sales of alternative currency to minors, if adults want to hope that the "currency" they believe in will become the future's global currency, we should not prevent them to put their wealth into getting a share of that dream any more than we prevent people from financing any religion. We could mandate cryptocurrency sellers to warn each buyer that any currency's value is proportional to its backing, but we live in a free market where mentally mature and sane individuals should be free to pay what they want for things they want, no matter how worthful - or worthless - they are. People buying alternative currencies are not hurting others, and not even literally hurting themselves. People "mining" are not necessarily hurting anyone, and if they do by consuming dirty energy, the negative externalities should be compensated by regular tax disincentives.

We should not prohibit Bitcoins, Litecoins, foocoins or the next clever scheme alternative currency makers come up with. In part because that would be pointless; there is an infinity of worthless things we can create. And in part because some complementary currencies could be valuable if they had significant backing. What we should definitely ensure is that people who study macroeconomics, and ideally not only these, get an understanding of how actual money stores value.

Updates

2018-08-19

This article's publication marked the end of Peak Crypto. Now that the hype is well over, it is time to "sell" your "cryptocurrency", if you still haven't done so.

2018-09-04

The hype is really over, now that The Economist acknowledges "cryptocurrencies" are useless. Hurry!

2018-09-16

While "cryptocurrencies" keep crashing, nuance about their worthlessness is getting more important. 2 so-called stablecoins have appeared, "stablecoin" being another clever marketing term to suggest that a cryptocurrency's value will be stable since it is pegged to a stable asset - in these cases, the USD. The convertibility is simply provided by the private company which issues each one of these "currencies", but the Gemini dollar is regulated by the USA and seems to have a guaranteed value of 1 USD (update: it's now being sued by the federation).

Another cryptocurrency with a guarantee from a state was launched in February - Venezuela's petro, which is directly backed by natural resources of the country. However, the petro cannot be "mined", and appears to be a scam from the government to help alleviate Venezuela's crisis, probably only useful to avoid economic sanctions.

2018-11-16

With the Bitcoin fever over, Axios has published graphs putting Peak Crypto in the first half of 2018.

2018-11-24

Bitcoin and its brothers are getting more prominence in shops. Will "cryptocurrency" owners soon be able to use their "currency" as such? No such luck... the shops won't accept it, but they'll "sell" it. Next to other "goods" with a clear value, such as tobacco... at least, tobacco buyers can feel a little less guilty about wasting their money now, by simultaneously "investing" in another poison.

Ah, the Ultimate Irony...
"Cryptocurrency": the pseudo-currency which no one understood and which stores never accepted... but sold!
Yep, even with its contradiction now exposed in broad daylight

2022-08-12

I spotted such a crhypeto shop... on my way back from work!

After many years contributing to open source projects, I can't say results of SlashData's developer survey surprise me much, but it's good to see my feelings are shared.

That being said, I think what developers fundamentally want is not necessarily open source per se, but to avoid the miserable feeling of being tasked to reinvent a wheel. Those who have the necessary talent want to create generic solutions to widespread problems which can and will help as much people as possible, not just their little organization. Here's hoping for more code sharing, more satisfied developers, less wasting of our top talents in duplication, and fewer but better wheels.