_coldfire

It's actually the temperature cycling that's far worse for them.

Plenty of available reading on cryptocurrency mining forums.

I'm legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming)

The equipment required for gaming loses value very quickly. Old 7970's released in 2012 command amazing resale prices in 2018. Everything else in a rig back then is now worthless apart from scrap metal.

GPU's are one of the biggest expenses for gaming, as a hobby it got far cheaper. The fear is unfounded and this is typical alarm-journalism.

Now if only CPU's held value 6 years from now.

Highly recommend Four Fish by Paul Greenberg, does a good job showing all sides of the fishing industry and the projected future if we keep going the same way.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7347759-four-fish

To bypass paywall, no facebook account needed, drop into console or a bookmark (HN formatting weird, zerobin text there anyway):

javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.l...;

alternative:

https://zerobin.net/?9b41630b08e38f96#FAC6oUt+oqX9fwxhamtom+...

The bitcoin blockchain is a crappy database that's incredibly secure because it's backed by an amazing amount of irreversible thermodynamic energy. Anything you put into it is there forever, even quantum computing couldn't undo anything a few hours old. That's all the public needs to know.

These articles are a bit tiring, despite being an aficionado somewhat keen for a blockchain winter.

A huge amount of hashpower was behind the desire for bitcoin cash, and that didn't work out.

Think some underestimate firstmover advantage and end-user inertia.

And how much computational power will that need?

From the article:

Taught that in case of a real attack the US would have gone on an all-out offensive, Petrov told his bosses the alarm must have been caused by a system malfunction.

The only proven countermeasure so far is delegated proof of stake, which has "trusted" parties doing the staking. But this goes against the idea of decentralisation.

Some people wonder if pure proof-of-stake is even possible. Ethereum is likely going with DPOS, yet to see a single solution to the nothing-at-stake problem.

There's huge energy oversupply in Sichuan province, you can't just keep storing hydropower infinitely, it has to be released to protect the dams.

All this outrage is misguided, the market incentives mean miners go to where the cheapest power is, all the industrial scale mining is located next to large renewables sources in China, Pacific NW, Scandanvia/Iceland.

The largest ethereum mine in the world is 100% renewable.

Most garbage collection in Australia has a camera to inspect bin contents and catch people abusing the recycling system.

It's been in place for a decade now.

https://www.news-mail.com.au/news/waste-truck-watching-you-g...

Multi-gpu systems are why graphics cards are scarce.

To download all books at once: https://gist.github.com/graymouser/a33fbb75f94f08af7e36

Improved *nix version further down the thread

Change "MOBI" to "PDF"/"EPUB" if desired

Shhh, plenty of humble books are easily found, but they do good work and provide quality content.

If some of these projects go on to produce open source software of worth it won't all be for nothing.

Associating the ERC-20 protocol with the current mania and nonsense of cryptocurrencies doesn't seem fair. It's simply a method of creating a sub-currency, which yes is often unnecessary but marketing is a powerful force so it happens.

Having seen small rural communities try and fail to create their own local currency years ago it's only a matter of time before some try again digitally.

Care to elaborate how China has banned it? Last time i was there I had no problem using VPN, and a dozen or so services that utilise encryption, PGP didn't magically stop working the moment i touched down. Customs were far more concerned about my camera batteries than tools of digital freedom on my laptop.

Seems like you are conflating the efforts of the Great Firewall with the word encryption here.

Done by a government with proper legal oversight it certainly has its place and easily will be a net positive for society. Though lawmakers seem to be oblivious to tech advances moving far quicker than they can, don't hold much hope they can keep up.

Used by corporations it will be frustrating and take privacy intrusions to the next level. In the end though, democracies will survive fine.

The real issue is tyrannical regimes getting their hands on facial recognition, it's a terrifying prospect and likely to be used with great effect.

Nameless resumes are a good way to counter the inefficiencies of a system not based on merit.

compared to the use of finite stores of value

Ethereum has no cap on supply. Bitcoin is capped at 21m coins.

As long as all the entry/exit points are regulated and in line with the government, Bitcoin is perfect for a country obsessed with capital controls.

Far easier to monitor than cash.

dont all early adopters usually win out? except of course for the multitudes that fail.

By what means? If you can send and receive tcp packets you can be on the bitcoin network.

I'd be intrigued how you think a government is going to shutdown a FOSS project with no leadership?

Last I looked turning off the internet isn't that popular and making laws doesn't prevent crimes, nor migration to other jurisdictions.

Most companies don't issues millions of new shares everyday

You would assume that it was kept quiet to protect the other coins out there using cryptonote.

Metal on metal also has a fraction of the rolling resistance.

Signal-jacking and gps spoofing is the only cost-efficient and scalable way to bring these things down. The word gun really mangles the reality of counter-drone solutions

Bitcoin mining has congregated around cheap sources of energy, In China at least, many are using surplus energy from the grid in cutprice deals with provincial govts.

Undoubtedly there is huge amounts of energy being pumped into Bitcoin daily, but it's environmental effects seem over-hyped compared to many other human endeavours.

It wasn't overlooked though. Issue was raised in Sept 2016

https://github.com/bitmaintech/bmminer/issues/7

Why is this on HN?

Bitmain claims they don't use it on mainnet

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/

Our ASIC chips, like those of some other manufacturers, have a circuit design that supports ASICBOOST. However, the ASICBOOST method has not been used by us on the mainnet. We have not seen any evidence yet on the main net that anyone has used it in the patented way.

The increasing number of empty blocks along with spymining that has been pushed under the table in this bizarre war, these are the real threats going forward.

Segwit or not, these issues will have to be dealt with at some point.