Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 321 posts

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#141

Post by lupire »

jonfw wrote: post #114
tudorw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy usage is a recognised issue and while it offers challenges they are understood and developers are keen to address this. If you want to start deconstruction of the industrial military complex that would be just fine and might really start to change things, until then I argue there are more worthy targets for your ire than the energy use of an emerging technology.

This is like saying that pollution is a recognized issue with fossil fuels and while it offers challenges they are understood and engineers are keen to address this. There aren't always easy solutions and you can't hand wave aside a massive problem because 'our best people are on it'

Are you also opposed to EVs which also have the problem of high initial costs for early iterations of the tech?

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#142

Post by beaconstudios »

IgorPartola wrote: post #136
groby_b wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... Selling a single token? 8.7MWh[1] That's slightly less than the average US household consumes in a year. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-hot-effect-earth-climate/

Has there been any movement in the crypto world (that isn’t just creating new coins) towards switching algorithms such that BTC et al don’t use proof of work anymore?

Ethereum is switching to proof of stake. AFAIK (not a crypto guy) it's the second largest blockchain.

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#143

Post by __s »

beervirus wrote: post #140
TeMPOraL wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if the evil side can exploit this phenomenon to great success (e.g. drone strikes allowing to kill people halfway across the world, and making it feel like playing a video game from 1990s), why can't the good side? We can despair about the nature of man all we want, but if in the meantime, we can get rich people here to spend a lot of money on helping people far away, that's still a huge net benefit for the wor…

Is it really evil to use drones to kill evil people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._...

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#144

Post by Kye »

dmingod666 wrote: post #68
edoloughlin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone get busy wrapping endangered species as NFT's and direct the funds accordingly' Can't help but wonder how much habitat is destroyed by the generation of a token.

Humans - that is problem number one. Like agent smith said in the Matrix. "Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet.." - Advocating for this cure will solve all the problems..

You realize he was an antagonist, right? He's not someone to model.

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#145

Post by hanniabu »

cik wrote: post #80
oakesm9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like sponsoring them so the charity can protect them from poachers and study them

Ever wonder if we're going about this all wrong. What if the real value was paying poachers to not poach?

Pay to poach the poachers. Or large sums of money to rat out organizations so they need to deal with internal revolt of some poachers throwing everyone else under the bus for their payout.

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#146

Post by lupire »

pas wrote: post #78
mszcz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that cryptocurrency energy consumption is as big a problem as it's been recently painted in the media. Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. are, potentially, self-contained, almost complete, final, financial systems. Using a VISA card (for instance to make the same contribution to wild-life preservation) would use a fraction of the energy that's used to sustain cryptocurrencies, sure, but that's not a fair comparison…

The estimated energy consumption of BTC is between the electricity consumption of Ukraine and Argentina. It's as if everyone would be a banker in Ukraine and every building would be a bank. Seems excessive.

That's incorrect because electricity is only one form of energy consumed. Oil/gasoline for cars/heat and natural gas for heat are other forms

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#148

Post by derefr »

beaconstudios wrote: post #142
IgorPartola wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any movement in the crypto world (that isn’t just creating new coins) towards switching algorithms such that BTC et al don’t use proof of work anymore?

Ethereum is switching to proof of stake. AFAIK (not a crypto guy) it's the second largest blockchain.

More relevant to the question at hand, Ethereum is also where all the NFTs are.

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#149

Post by derefr »

nradov wrote: post #131
vmception wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many countries of energy does the other financial system use, for comparison?

That wouldn't be a valid comparison. There's a lot more to the other financial system than just currency and payments. Even if hypothetically the whole world adopted Bitcoin we would still need most parts of the other financial system.

Sure, but rather than a vertical slice, do a horizontal slice. How much energy does every country in the world’s mints, bank vaults, etc. use up, including their whole logistical pipelines that wouldn’t be needed if countries didn’t mint+store physical currency?

Re: WallStreetBets members adopt 3,500 gorillas in six days

#150

Post by nerdponx »

viraptor wrote: post #115
nerdponx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people say stuff like this? You don't need email either, just write a letter or send a fax. The point is that here is a piece of new technology that's part of a new vision for the future. Maybe you think it's an unrealistic vision, but that's no reason to sneer at people who disagree with you.

Email is easier and provides more features than a letter or fax in most cases. (With both still having some use in specific cases like personal messages or gov regulated messaging) NFT is harder and doesn't seem to provide any features over current donations. (It's actually worse due to unstable exchange rates and large fees) Unless the vision provides benefits we did not have before I will continue to sneer at "the…

Some people think it's a good idea to have a distributed, immutable ledger for stuff like this, with the ability to make payments without depending on a handful of individual corporations like Paypal and Visa. The fact that it's "blockchain" is immaterial except that blockchain happens to be the technology that makes it possible.

There's so much knee-jerk opposition to "blockchain" stuff just because some nerds get too excited about it (and some people are trying to get rich off it). It makes no sense to me.

Post reply on HN