Somebody needs to invent a coin that works on proof-of-carbon-emission-reductions, or proof-of-global-poverty-reduction and do some real good for the world.
A tree with a distributed ledger. The one who plants the most trees wins.
Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
121–130 of 188 posts
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#122Somebody needs to invent a coin that works on proof-of-carbon-emission-reductions, or proof-of-global-poverty-reduction and do some real good for the world.
This is one of the themes of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Ministry for the Future"
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#123I’m sure all the crypto fans are lining up around the block to tell us that their pet technology doesn’t waste valuable resources, it just uses storage that would otherwise have gone unused, as they do with Bitcoin and electricity.
I'm extremely disappointed Bram Cohen is behind this. I used to really admire him for his work on Bittorrent but this is going to be an indelible asterisk on his legacy as a coder.
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#124Perhaps the "paperclip maximizer" doomsday scenario was right in was right in its broad strokes but just wrong about the agents involved? They were worried about a super-competent AI that burns resources producing low-utility widgets. In fact we have created an system (a combination of societal incentive structures and technological tools) that burns resources producing low-utility pseudo-random numbers.
Hasn't the paperclip optimizer always been a euphemism for capitalism?
No, it's purely about AIs and the control problem.
The problem boils down to "How can I control superior AIs through mere power of inferior humans?".
The assumption is that the superhuman nature means there is no way disable a superhuman AI because deactivation will not fulfill its cost function and therefore must be avoided at all costs, the superhuman AI will always outsmart humans and prevent deactivation, the same way a skilled soldier will always beat an untrained civilian in combat.
We have solved it for humans by accepting that the victor gets to lead humanity. Can we accept AI rule? Probably not.
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you "plot" at the chip factory (producing some sort of pre-plotted ROM) or does it have to be updated in some way?
The plots are each unique, and are too large (hundreds of GB) to represent as a ROM.
Sounds like it's only a matter of time. We didn't have an incentive to create chips like the before, but just like with the specialised mining ASICs, we may see one soon.
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#126Some people think Chia is so much better because of it uses SSD / Storage rather than GPU. I think this could be far worse. Not everyone needs a GPGPU, but everyone need NAND and SSD. And it already causes price hike for SSD we will soon see something similar to chip shortage. The DRAM Fab which could be quickly retooled to NAND will be part of this equation as well. This is not good.
Yeah, the problem is actually worse. Bitcoin is energy intensive. Chia is capital intensive. Producing capital costs energy so it effectively boils down to proof of work (burning energy to produce HDDs and SSDs). However, scaling energy is very easy, scaling HDD production is very difficult.
The only benefit is that storage can be repurposed very easily, thus booms and busts may cause temporary oversupply of storage.
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#127Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
In order to be considered a net benefit, it only needs to emit less carbon than compute-based mining. It doesn't need to be carbon neutral (and indeed, I don't think anyone posited that it was).
That's a pretty low bar. To be a net benefit it should emit less carbon than traditional payment processing. If you set my house on fire you don't get to call saving my cat a "net benefit".
How much carbon is emitted by traditional payment processing?
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#129Some people think Chia is so much better because of it uses SSD / Storage rather than GPU. I think this could be far worse. Not everyone needs a GPGPU, but everyone need NAND and SSD. And it already causes price hike for SSD we will soon see something similar to chip shortage. The DRAM Fab which could be quickly retooled to NAND will be part of this equation as well. This is not good.
Chia isn't worth farming anymore. I have a pile of old spare 512GB SSDs and it looks like I would able to make something like $2/day. Not even enough for a coffee. Same with Ethereum. Tried to mine with my Titan V. 31 MH/s. Also not even enough for a coffee. This is meaningless, and cryptocurrencies are effectively centralized around mining farms with ASICs.
I bought a 512GB SSD for around 60€ some time ago. Let's be generous and assume 40 days pay back. It could be 90 days and it still would be worth it. I don't know how fast SSD wear out when used for Chia though, it could be unprofitable for all I know.
Re: Scaleway announces measures against abusive Chia plotting and farming
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hasn't the paperclip optimizer always been a euphemism for capitalism?
Even so bitcoin takes it to its logical extreme. You put valuable resources in one end and get money out the other side. In between, no useful work is done. It's the essence of capitalism without any of the beneficial side effects we've come to expect.
Gold mining is similar, although obviously not to the same extreme. Only 8% of the output is used industrially. https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...
So gold mining is only 90% waste, whereas Bitcoin mining gets close to 100% waste.
Then again, perhaps printed dollars could perhaps also be considered highly wasteful?