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

Post by chade » Mon, May 03, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

curryst wrote: post #231

vladvasiliu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with Proof-of-space you are printing your tickets once and then storing them for years. So then where's the issue with SSD wear, and wouldn't it be more interesting for people to have spinning drives (for the better ratio of GB / $)? > There is extra layers, Chia is actually proof-of-space-and-time, so that you can't win by faking proof-of-space with proof-of-work. Is it because of this? So you'd have to print your…

> wouldn't it be more interesting for people to have spinning drives (for the better ratio of GB / $)? You do trade off for a slower read rate. If the rate of requests coming in is fast enough, your spinning drive/s may not be fast enough to go through the indexes for each one.

Post by lsiebert » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

Graffur wrote: post #45

lsiebert wrote: post #36

Interesting. There are a bunch of variants, but it seems like there are three main ways of handling crypto. Bitcoin is proof of work, which of course requires a lot of electricity. Some coins, like Neo/CutCoin are proof of stake, which basically let you stake some money, which I guess you can't spend and use that to handle transactions, so instead of running mining rigs, you just stake the money and earn a return. Et…

I am fascinated by the POS coins you chose to list. Why list neo and cutcoin over Cardano? I've never heard of either!

Post by dang » Mon, May 03, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

Igelau wrote: post #83

dang wrote: post #48

Recent related threads: Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27008295 - May 2021 (106 comments) SSD makers start warning that mining products like ChiaCoin will void warranty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 - May 2021 (381 comments) Chia surpasses 1 exabyte of hard drive space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975734 - April 2021 (151 comm…

So in other words, there's a campaign (centralized or not) to pump Chia on HN? :(

Post by dr_kiszonka » Mon, May 03, 2021, 8:58 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #190

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…

> Who uses Bitcoin for peer-to-peer payments? And the cryptocurrency ecosystem as it exists right now, far from allowing people to transact without third parties Bitcoin may not be what it set out to be, but how is that a bad thing? The market decided whatever it should be. What bitcoin did is inspire creation of many, genuinely interesting currencies, some even learning from bitcoin's failings: Stellar.org that aims…

Post by rovr138 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

MrFoof wrote: post #225

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…

I just did some NAS upgrades a month ago and feel as if I dodged a bullet. I'm curious what you ended up paying. I bought drives on sale, and got nine 16TB external drives to shuck (one is a spare) for ~$2250 USD taxed and shipped. I will warn you though that burn-in testing is going to take a while. I did a very exhaustive test[1]... and two drives at a time over USB3 it took about twelve calendar days to test them…