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

What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

tomsguide.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 263 posts

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#141

Post by randomsearch »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

I think many of us underestimate the power of FOMO and the desire to get rich quick.

The latter isn’t necessarily greed, lots of people just don’t have the good fortune to make a comfortable amount of money (as those of us in tech do) so are more susceptible to bubbles.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#142

Post by nikanj »

cwyers wrote: post #94

I just... do not understand how smart, even _brilliant_ people, the sort of people who know enough to make something like this, can look at Bitcoin... the waste, the way it has utterly failed to achieve what it set out to do[1], everything, and thinks, I know, I want to do that, but instead of blowing up the market for GPUs it'll be SSDs. Why? To get rich? It even seems doubtful to me that the people who developed Ch…

Some people look at the lives of poor people vs the lives of ultra-rich people, and decide to get rich. Crypto is a decent way to get rich right now.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#144

Post by faeyanpiraat »

saurik wrote: post #127
mike_d wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you can't become a "miner" (sell bandwidth) without becoming a partner. All of which are existing VPN companies - who probably have their abuse handling well ironed out at this point.

(I am the lead developer of Orchid.) Can you tell me where you read that bit about "without becoming a partner"? It is sort of correct--like, I can see how that argument could be made--but not really true in any fundamental sense... it certainly isn't true enough that I would have personally said it to someone, as if you want to provide bandwidth you absolutely can, it is just highly unlikely anyone will buy it, as t…

Why would anyone sell their bandwidth then?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#145

Post by photon-torpedo »

PeterStuer wrote: post #129
schmichael wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People would litter just to create more garbage to “mine.”

We had (have) this here in Belgium with a very real case. Separate collection of plastics and the creation of plastics collection and recycling (organizations)companies were introduced for environmental improvement. Unfortunately, these have turned into the biggest plastic packaging lobby and have caused an explosion in the use of plastic packaging in retail. More plastic use is unfortunately a net benefit to those w…

I would have thought that Belgium had learned from its past [1] to think carefully about providing incentives with potentially (horribly) harmful side effects.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... -- "... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became a sort of currency ..."

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#146

Post by Kiro »

matkoniecz wrote: post #130
Kiro wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a forum called Hacker News is so dismissive of an invention that should be right up a hacker's alley. Innovative, technical, cryptographic and decentralized. Cryptocurrencies feel like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel.

> Cryptocurrencies feel like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel. And that is exactly why I dislike it. At least among ones that I encountered cyberpunk is strongly dystopian. > I don't understand how a forum called Hacker News is so dismissive of an invention that should be right up a hacker's alley I hope that Chia dies and falls on its face before SSD and HDD will repeat story of GPU. I like to use this re…

> At least among ones that I encountered cyberpunk is strongly dystopian.

Back in the day when we were sitting in dark basements with big Unix beards drinking Jolt cola, we all dreamed of living in a crypto-anarchy, becoming cyborgs with chip implants and fully submerge in the Metaverse. I guess times have changed.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#147

Post by tromp »

surround wrote: post #12

It took me a while to actually understand how proof-of-work mining works because seemingly every article one the subject gives too abstract of an explanation. Turns out it's not that complex if you understand what a cryptographic hash is. Just take a block (a list of recent transactions) and take a SHA-256 hash if it over and over with slight variations until you get a hash that starts with enough consecutive zeroes.…

What you describe is an instance of the Hashcash Proof-of-Work. There are many other types of PoW, which don't amount to just computing a hash function [1].

[1] https://cryptorials.io/beyond-hashcash-proof-work-theres-min...

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#148

Post by faeyanpiraat »

pmlnr wrote: post #125
deckplecksetter wrote: post #44

If only someone could invent a cryptocurrency that incentivises something good instead of something harmful.

There's FoldingCoin: https://www.newsbtc.com/news/foldingcoin-where-people-mine-p... Things that would make sense: - SETI@homeCoin, ala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home - ArchiveCoin, ala https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior These would actually be useful.

If I fold for free, i get nothing.

If I fold trough one of your examples I can get money.

Where is that money coming from?

Blockchain seems like an artificial extra step to pay folders in this case.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#149

Post by faeyanpiraat »

Tepix wrote: post #120
stonewareslord wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gridcoin is designed for this. It is based on scientific research and instead of sha256 hashes of random data, coins are earned by proof of your computer doing scientific research. From their homepage: > Examples include protein structure prediction (Rosetta@home), mapping the Milky Way galaxy (Milkyway@home), and tackling problems in public health and clean energy (World Community Grid).

How do you prevent malicious research projects in a decentralized system?

What would you consider malicious?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#150

Post by rovr138 »

Tepix wrote: post #126
rovr138 wrote: post #7

Just bought a new Synology NAS this week and started putting together disks and they're scarce and the prices are through the roof. Couldn't find what I was planning on buying. What I found was through the roof. I bit the bullet and bought 4 new ones. Not enough to fully populate the NAS, but at least it'll give me some space for now to do what I need. We've seen scarcity and what it does for prices after the floodin…

Did you look at large external USB hard drives' prices?

I did.

I basically ended up getting external seagates that I’m planning to schuck after doing a ‘burn-in’ test. Still high for what they were.

Post reply on HN