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tango alpha delta posted:tldr: Once you understand how computers actually work, technology like blockchain, bitcoin, cryptography and literally everything else that computers do becomes much easier to understand and you will be far less likely to be fooled by a bunch of pseudo techno bullshit. i do things like occasionally lobby to politicians why bitcoin is bad and blockchain is nonsense the most amazing thing was when Alex Sobel MP (soft lefty, Labour Co-Op) and Steve Baker MP (arch Brexiter hard case), who agree on absolutely nothing and are bitterly opposed politically, had identical opinions on blockchain: that a linked list is not exciting and not magical, and selling it as either is basically a con. the key factor here is that, despite their opposite politics, they both have degrees in computer science, know precisely what a blockchain is and how it works and are deeply professionally unimpressed by nonsense wrapped in tech bafflegab. as a technology, blockchain has had no innovation since at least 2003, yes I said two thousand and three, when David S.H. Rosenthal (a comp sci prof who made his bundle as one of the early guys at NVidia) made a system using a Merkle tree ledger, voting and proof of work. Only he didn't call it a revolution in money and sell it to gullible libertarians - because this was all very well-known stuff. Here's his blog post on bitcoin's technological antecedents. i also did a talk to an infosec crowd in 2018 on wtf a blockchain actually is, if you have about 50 min to spare (or it's quite watchable at 1.25x).
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Feb 1, 2020 10:34
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not being able to fix bugs in code running on ethereum is funny, but it kinda had to be designed that way - if people were able to fix bugs, they would also be able to insert code that sends all the money in the contract to themselves
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Feb 1, 2020 12:55
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why it's almost as if the idea of smart contracts is actually idiotic and promoted by people with no understanding of law, practical computing, human nature, or their own hubris
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Feb 1, 2020 14:01
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ymgve posted:not being able to fix bugs in code running on ethereum is funny, but it kinda had to be designed that way - if people were able to fix bugs, they would also be able to insert code that sends all the money in the contract to themselves Good news! You can still do that. Check out the DAO kw0134 posted:why it's almost as if the idea of smart contracts is actually idiotic and promoted by people with no understanding of law, practical computing, human nature, or their own hubris Techbros and AM/FM
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Feb 1, 2020 14:07
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ymgve posted:not being able to fix bugs in code running on ethereum is funny, but it kinda had to be designed that way - if people were able to fix bugs, they would also be able to insert code that sends all the money in the contract to themselves It's almost as if having computer code as the basis of a currency is an inherently bad idea. It's like when I was a kid and played, oh I dunno, Sonic 1 on the Genesis and was blown away at how awesome it was and how tight the controls were and how seemingly rock solid and perfect it was at release. And then 20 years later you see the speedruns of it and see how many glaring holes there were in the programming and logic and how easy it is to exploit and totally break by a skilled player. Now imagine that game (unpatchable by design) which seemed so perfect and rock solid on release in 1993 as the basis of all human currency.
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Feb 1, 2020 14:09
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I can say I’m all sincerity I’ve read almost every post in this thread and I still have no idea how half this poo poo works.
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Feb 1, 2020 15:38
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holy poo poo, remember bitcoins? the whole thing was absolutely insane. like, there was that one pedo guy who had a Bitcoin tv show and then goons made his phone vibrate off the table on air?
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Feb 1, 2020 15:46
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TheBizzness posted:I can say I’m all sincerity I’ve read almost every post in this thread and I still have no idea how half this poo poo works. In fairness, neither do 99.99% of posters here
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Feb 1, 2020 15:56
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I guess loving "cryptocurrency" makes a lot of sense from a libertarian perspective since you have no faith in the concept of administrative control over technical control. The US Dollar has lots of "technical" controls on it, such as anti-counterfeiting etc etc but the real power behind the currency is the organization which administers it (US GOV). This concept is impossible for libertarians to get behind thus crypto currencies with their seemingly (but not really) perfect technical controls makes it look very appealing. Also greedy idiot syndrome.
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Feb 1, 2020 16:12
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Question for the thread: are anarchists libertarians?
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Feb 1, 2020 16:14
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ymgve posted:not being able to fix bugs in code running on ethereum is funny, but it kinda had to be designed that way - if people were able to fix bugs, they would also be able to insert code that sends all the money in the contract to themselves Not being able to fix bugs in written code once it goes to the blockchain is one thing, but then consider that the bugs in the language itself from this post have a very difficult time being fixed because you have to get 51% of the miners to agree to move to the next point version of Ethereum. Imagine if every time MS discovered a bug in their OS they had to get a majority of people to vote yes to release an update? xtal posted:Question for the thread: are anarchists libertarians? No. Randian Libertarians want all the structures & protections of society that we have now, but poor people get excluded from them because they don't pull their weight. Anarchists are against the present structures of society full stop. An ultra libertarian things an indentured servitude contract is fine because Contracts Are Sacred, and the gov't shouldn't be able to unilaterally nullify it. Anarchists think all contracts are bad. Libertarians want private police, anarchists want no police. Both of them end up with Somalia.
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Feb 1, 2020 16:26
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Klyith posted:
That would be a LOL.
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Feb 1, 2020 16:30
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Libertarians believe that the only legitimate government is the minimum state which does not violate individual's rights as its functions are limited to protection of individuals against force, theft, fraud and enforcement of contracts. However, it's only through the actions of the immoral state that created the distribution of wealth enjoyed by libertarians today. By libertarians own description of the moral state the redistribution of wealth is, not only justified, but necessary. As you might imagine they are against this.
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Feb 1, 2020 17:17
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divabot posted:i also did a talk to an infosec crowd in 2018 on wtf a blockchain actually is, if you have about 50 min to spare (or it's quite watchable at 1.25x). This was a great and informative talk, thank you for posting it. You do stellar work.
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Feb 1, 2020 18:12
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Klyith posted:Libertarians want private police, anarchists want no police. Both of them end up with Somalia.
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Feb 1, 2020 18:40
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I keep misreading the word "libertarian" here and wondering why you guys are saying that the nice old ladies who work at the library have such destructive and unsustainable ideas about human societies. I mean they seem like such nice old ladies
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Feb 1, 2020 19:32
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That's what they want you to believe. Have you tried asking them about bitcoin?
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Feb 1, 2020 19:50
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We'll have the Dewey decimal system on the Blockchain.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:29
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zedprime posted:Did someone say Ethereum  Holy poo poo. I wouldn't trust that to concatenate two text files, let alone... hell, anything else.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:30
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I'm trying to imagine how much education someone must have gotten to think they could write a computer language when nearly anyone who has such knowledge should immediately scream at the idea.
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Feb 1, 2020 22:22
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xtal posted:Question for the thread: are anarchists libertarians? http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secF1.html
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Feb 1, 2020 22:47
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divabot posted:i also did a talk to an infosec crowd in 2018 on wtf a blockchain actually is, if you have about 50 min to spare (or it's quite watchable at 1.25x).
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Feb 1, 2020 23:36
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drat, great article. I came to a lot of the same conclusions about libertarians
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Feb 2, 2020 00:00
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divabot posted:i also did a talk to an infosec crowd in 2018 on wtf a blockchain actually is, if you have about 50 min to spare (or it's quite watchable at 1.25x). I've directed a few people to your site. Thank you, this is great. Here's my rant for the visually impaired coiners, which is redundant, now that I think about it. https://soundcloud.com/user-710437758/pseudo-techno-bullshit tango alpha delta fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 00:19
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LethalGeek posted:I'm trying to imagine how much education someone must have gotten to think they could write a computer language when nearly anyone who has such knowledge should immediately scream at the idea. Christian Reitwiessner is an actual Ph.D computer scientist, so he has literally no excuse for this thing tango alpha delta posted:I've directed a few people to your site. Thank you, this is great. There's also the non-technical version of the talk - that one was to market researchers, so totally for non-techies.
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Feb 2, 2020 12:48
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Mr Gerard have you looked into the study that Coinbase did a while ago that claims that 60% or whatever of Bitcoin is powered by renewable energy? It smells like massive amounts of bullshit.
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Feb 2, 2020 13:14
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spankmeister posted:Mr Gerard have you looked into the study that Coinbase did a while ago that claims that 60% or whatever of Bitcoin is powered by renewable energy? It smells like massive amounts of bullshit. I'm not a divabot-level expert, but I actually wouldn't be surprised. It wouldn't be out of any high-mindedness on the part of Bitcoiners: they locust-swarm cheap, abundant power, which happens to be largely hydroelectric. While some of them talk about 'preventing waste', electricity is mostly fungible (at least across a grid region); eating up a lot of sustainable power means that it's not available for anything else, and eventually someone's going to get stuck burning coal. Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 14:22
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spankmeister posted:Mr Gerard have you looked into the study that Coinbase did a while ago that claims that 60% or whatever of Bitcoin is powered by renewable energy? It smells like massive amounts of bullshit. https://coinsharesgroup.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-december-2019 - you can put in a nonsense email to view it. Bitcoin mining is tolerated in such areas until it's not, e.g. it was banned in an upstate New York city after mining farms started gobbling up 11.2 megawatts per month and the city was forced to buy more electricity from non-renewable sources. https://www.pressrepublican.com/news/local_news/city-seeks-moratorium-on-currency-plants/article_700695bf-16dc-5da8-9bb0-46e5a5bce70c.html
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Feb 2, 2020 14:24
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yeah basically the new hotness (<-- global warming pun) is bitcoin miners trying to buy up obsolete coal power plants so they can burn coal to make pedo pesos thankfully the scam is usually to get tax breaks, and never to proceed to actually restarting the plant that literally shut down in the first place because it wasn't economically viable
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Feb 2, 2020 15:25
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Pedo pesos is the best bitcoin name.
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Feb 2, 2020 15:48
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I only hovered over one of those links but why is siberia supposed to be a good place to mine bitcoins in 
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Feb 2, 2020 16:15
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The Clitoris posted:drat, great article. I came to a lot of the same conclusions about libertarians Anarchists and Marxists are really great sources when you want to point out flaws in other people's systems. Gobbeldygook posted:It's true because mining is mostly done in areas like Sichuan China where electricity is cheap due to hydropower. Also keep in mind that China lies a whole lot about their power grid and what their proportions of clean vs emissions-producing are.
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Feb 2, 2020 16:27
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Sickening posted:Pedo pesos is the best bitcoin name.
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Feb 2, 2020 16:49
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EorayMel posted:I only hovered over one of those links but why is siberia supposed to be a good place to mine bitcoins in Fleetwood Crack posted:I like dunning-kruggerands
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Feb 2, 2020 16:59
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EorayMel posted:I only hovered over one of those links but why is siberia supposed to be a good place to mine bitcoins in I would assume because it's so cold, you save on cooling costs.
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Feb 2, 2020 17:44
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EorayMel posted:I only hovered over one of those links but why is siberia supposed to be a good place to mine bitcoins in It's cold (saves on cooling costs) and has a lot of cheap Soviet-era hydro power. Power was at the time about 4¢/kwh. There are also a lot of more-or-less empty buildings you can shove full of mining hardware for minimal costs, instead of having to build your own or compete with productive interests.
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Feb 2, 2020 18:00
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Sickening posted:Pedo pesos is the best bitcoin name. Also works perfectly because in spanish, "pedo" means fart so it means "fart bucks". Also being "en pedo" means being drunk or delusional, so that's another perfect fit, and "al pedo" means something like "effort for nothing".
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Feb 2, 2020 19:52
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i hope this is a timeline where warming russian permafrost leads to a massive methan sinkhole explosion and takes out a buttmining op.
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Feb 2, 2020 20:44
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Fleetwood Crack posted:I like dunning-kruggerands Yeah, that's my personal fave.
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Feb 3, 2020 00:23
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Sickening posted:Pedo pesos is the best bitcoin name. diddler dollars creeper kroners fiddler francs ephebophile euros savile shillings nambla nickels nonce cents cellblock chain
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Feb 3, 2020 17:27
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