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Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

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81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically I was speculating the other day if not this whole peer review thing would be a good candidate for a crypto currency Some mechanism by which to speculate on the impact or future credibility of a paper would create some kind of prediction market Proof of impact prediction?

Just what we need... more incentives for scientists to game the system.

Ideally the scientists would be left out. Leaving the gaming as such to the reviewers.

But yeah, there is probably lots of interesting ways such a system would fail.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#82
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add them all together for the ultimate, proof of destruction: cryptocurrency backed by atmospheric pollution, fauna and flora extinction and natural resource exhaustion. Buy it now, it definitely won't last forever! :D Bu seriously, I still don't understand cryptocurrencies. So, your X discoin is worth Y million real money . But that's only while it's in cryptocurrency form. If people start cashing out, the value wil…

You spending time on social media or driving or eating does destroy the nature too, but you somehow justify it to yourself.

We need to be extremely careful using this kind of argument (or, in fact, fallacy). By the same token, we all get some secondary exposure to some toxic substances, we might as well not care at all and expose ourselves more. When you think about it, exactly the opposite makes sense.

So basically if someone invented an eco-coin, that is a well-designed project fostering technologies focusing on healing the Earth (more efficient waste recycling, green energy, better air filters, new technologies for toxic and nuclear waste removal etc.), taking into account all the consequences of extreme popularity (none of the existing coins have, or they simply don't care), I'd be the first to invest in it, knowing that even if I lose, I win.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#83
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to wonder what'll occur first: the bubble popping or the whole hardware market coming to a standstill because of 16 different "proof of xyz" schemes. I cannot wait for internet connections to become unusable after a currency introduces "proof of bandwidth".

Is it possible to create a «proof of pain» cryptocurrency, where holders repratedly stab themselves with sharp objects to increase their cryptocurrency balance?

Sounds like the perfect scenario for the creation of torture farms.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "proof of space" Chia cryptocurrency: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009843

I'm starting to wonder what'll occur first: the bubble popping or the whole hardware market coming to a standstill because of 16 different "proof of xyz" schemes. I cannot wait for internet connections to become unusable after a currency introduces "proof of bandwidth".

> I cannot wait for internet connections to become unusable after a currency introduces "proof of bandwidth".

As an ISP I can say that any software that caused a large percentage of our customers to max out their downstream and upstream connections 24x7 would be cracked down on hard. ISP economics, and the reason your residential last mile service might cost $65 a month and not $400, is based on oversubscription. IF you look at a traffic chart for each customer in from a random selection of 50 homes, it's very bursty and intermittent.

You can put a lot of individual 1GbE symmetric FTTH customers on a 10Gbps uplink, because the likelihood they'll be trying to run a speed test or all transfer huge things simultaneously is low. 'proof of bandwidth' would very quickly require people to start doing their thing from 1U servers in colocation on dedicated hosting 1GbE services, which will cost at least 6-8x what a residential last mile service costs.

In general as a residential ISP the number of customers who decide to leave a system seeding many 70GB 2160p h265 torrents of movies is quite low, and small enough to not need to bother the customers about. Not many people try to do the same thing as running a hosting facility out of their bedroom closet. Less than a few percent.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#85
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are listed as fiction?

That's not a question?

Actually it is. It's implying what's the value (relative) of hosting only fiction (science fiction I assume) as opposed to actual scientific knowledge.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#86
post #4

Man, I love libgen. Will be completely lost if it ever shuts down. Anyone else use it to download books onto your kindle??

DRM related too. I bought books on Kindle but recently trying to highlight and process my reading notes more. Turns out publishers can set an upper limit to highlights (e.g. 20% of the book) and just cut the highlights off randomly. Infuriating, and I end up re-downloading those books (and more) off of libgen so I know my highlights are reliable.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#87

What prevents metaphorical Trojan-infected copies of Photoshop from ending up in a science piracy site?

They only host PDFs and EPUBs, so there's no software involved.

While I think it’s incorrect to assume PDFs cannot be exploited, I’m using computer viruses as a metaphor. What if a legit chemistry paper was tampered with such that the procedure creates and explosively releases a nerve agent and a cheap grad student that didn’t pay for the legal copy unknowingly follows it?

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#88
post #83
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to create a «proof of pain» cryptocurrency, where holders repratedly stab themselves with sharp objects to increase their cryptocurrency balance?

Sounds like the perfect scenario for the creation of torture farms.

That would be the unstated subtext. Maybe I should write a whitepaper.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#89
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks confer ownership of a company. If Apple remained the same, but everyone went insane and started selling Apple Stocks for $0.0000000000000000000000001 and people refused to buy, I would buy every one and then collect the dividends. Whereas if everyone sold crypto for $0.00000000000000000000001 and people refused to buy, you would gain nothing by buying them all. You can only make money in crypto if people buy i…

Except many stocks do not, in fact, pay dividends. Amazon doesn't and it's one of the most highly valued companies in the world. Meanwhile, just as a lot of crypto does not pay dividends I could make use of DeFi platforms to get it on the crypto I do own, or simply get Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies, then you can see the staking process as paying dividends of a kind. I get your hatred towards crypto, but you're cher…

Amazon had net income of $21 billion on 2020. Were you the sole shareholder you would be entitled to collect that if you chose. Currently amazon reinvests to grow but that doesn’t mean profits aren’t there.

Meanwhile if you owned all of bitcoin and wanted to keep the current hash rate you’d have to pay in about $20 billion a year, maybe more.

From a cashflow perspective, one is certainly better than the other to own, even if you are barred from selling.

Re: Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down (2019)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spending time on social media or driving or eating does destroy the nature too, but you somehow justify it to yourself.

We need to be extremely careful using this kind of argument (or, in fact, fallacy). By the same token, we all get some secondary exposure to some toxic substances, we might as well not care at all and expose ourselves more. When you think about it, exactly the opposite makes sense. So basically if someone invented an eco-coin, that is a well-designed project fostering technologies focusing on healing the Earth (more…

It exists: https://www.ecocoin.com/
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