Complete ignorance, byzantine fault tolerance is a great addition to society. No need to rely on intermediaries for trusted communication. This is not limited to financial transactions. Clear benefits to society are: oppression resistant voting systems, decentralized energy grid (solar power redistributed), reliable property rights (for under-developed / corrupt countries), transparent supply chain management (avoid counterfeits, traceability of sources, theft…etc)
Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
291–300 of 377 posts
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not divert that interest into the world of secure private and/or anonymous chat and networking protocols? The flow of information and ideas is more valuable than currency, and there is increasing pressure to legislate it out of existence.
It is not clear to me that there is any reasonable way to implement a truly permissionless and secure decentralized anonymous protocol without using programmatic money as you need some way to fairly allocate resources. Hell: if you stare into the soul of Bittorrent long enough trying to figure out how to make it worth your while to seed unpopular files you realize that it is essentially just digital barter screaming…
Tor relies on the IPv4 scarcity to make Sybil attacks more expensive but is slowly moving away from it e.g. the number of allowed relays per IP was recently doubled from 2 to 4 and it may get doubled in the near future again.
>Roger Dingledine does claim to "personally have met" 2/3rds of them
Hey said that he knew 2/3 in the beginning so 10 years+ ago and that it's no longer the case but he would like to increase the number of relay operator he or others of the Tor Project knows again. There are in person relay operator meetups at conferences (e.g Chaos Communication Congress) and I assume that he met most of the people at such occasions. I'm not sure why this should be terrifying.
>whitelist model (which is how Tor manages their high-risk exit nodes)
I'm not sure if this ever was the case but exit nodes aren't threatened specially than other relays and there is no whitelist model for them.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
The repeating theme of crypto fans postulating "free" cashflow without government involvment is the road to salvation is annoying me so much. Cashflow without government involvement is the absolute opposite of democratic freedom. Take literally any autocratic government ripe with corruption, look at Russia, China et al. Look at any large criminal organization which tries to avoid democratically elected governmental r…
Going the other direction where government controls all aspects of society is what the USSR and China decided was the best system. When the USSR broke up they gave all citizens ownership of previously held state enterprises which was worthless to them and those shares were sold ended up in few players hands. Crypto is the opposite where miners hold as much power as developers to create a balance. You can't sue in Can…
> miners hold as much power as developers to create a balance
I have no horse in this conversation about government, but I think it's important to note that neither developers nor miners hold any direct power in creating a balance on a properly decentralized blockchain. Their only power is insofar as they are able to convince users to collectively change their node software to introduce code that creates such a balance. A chain's developers are generally in a much better position to convince users of that than its miners (or stakers) are.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
5 years ago, somewhere on the internet: >Anyone that's bought in during the past few years isn't early. >Those that held pre-2012 are the ones that got in early. >The rest could probably make better returns speculating in the US markets.
Just like everything it depends on what you buy and when you buy and sell it. Post 2017 the largest theoretical gain from bitcoin so far was about 20x, if you bought at the post 2017 low in December of 2018 and sold at the 2021 high almost three years later. Gamestop stock almost matched that 20x for 2020-21 gains alone. Apple has been up well over 500x in the last 20 years. Ethereum was a better deal during this tim…
That's the problem with many hyped assets: they're only profitable in the short term if you buy in before the pump, and sell before the dump.
I still believe Ethereum is poised for a fair amount of growth in the long-term, though likely nothing near the rise it's enjoyed in it's last run. I say that only because it's an on-ramp to so many other cryptocurrencies.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.
What a childish argument
It's a depressing reality that most adults will not progress past stage 4 in Kohlberg's moral reasoning.
The law however arbitrary and flawed is the source of morals for most adults.
George Carlin said it best with “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO since crypto is a newer technology than AI, I think it's more relevant to ask whether crypto is "AI all over again". AI has followed the classic Gartner hype cycle [1]. There was the trigger in the 1960s-90s, the peak of inflated expectations in 2000-2010 with every other company bragging about "AI this" or "machine learning that" while having nothing of any use to show for it, then finally the "slope of enlighte…
Modern AI is less than ten years old. Digital money is older than crypto. PyTorch: Initial release September 2016; 6 years ago Tensorflow: Initial release November 9, 2015; 7 years ago > In 1983, a research paper titled "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments" by David Chaum introduced the idea of digital cash. > The first artificial neural network was invented in 1958 by psychologist Frank Rosenblatt. In the limi…
It's odd that you're willing to go back to 1983 for a single paper but ignoring all the AI work in the 70s/80s - marvin minsky and the perceptron are literally 1970s tech.
Applying your same "modern AI is less than 10 years old", modern cryptocurrency really dates no older than Bitcoin. That took off say maybe 2010-12 or so, while the AI research was really kicking off around 2012-2014.
They're roughly the same age on both scales, Bitcoin is probably a bit older than modern AI and AI fundamentals are probably a bit older than cryptocurrency fundamentals, it sounds like. But this is arguing about 2 years +/- for the modern stuff and 5y +/- for the 70s/80s stuff.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Women's right to choose what goes in their bodies is an important right in Canada. Not to worry the wartime act will be used on something you personally care about but by that time your rights will be gone.
^ Exhibit A: commenter fails to recognize that there are sometimes good reason to temporarily limit rights, such as to limit the spread of infectious diseases, because commenter knows very little about public health or epidemiology. Commenter believes that anytime rights are limited, it's for a nefarious purpose, and it can't possibly be for a good reason. How's the syphillis and HIV treating you? Oh what's that? You…
Not the best example. We live in a society that intentionally infected 600 African American men with syphilis, without their consent, simply to see what happens despite knowing effective treatment already existed. Nice concept indeed.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because capital is necessary for growth and the more expensive capital becomes the less growth is anticipated.
We've seen a lot of growth over the past decades, so it should be easy to retire at 30, but we're being told to work longer, be more productive, and die sooner. So where is that all growth? something doesn't add up.
> So where is that all growth?
Is that a rhetorical question? It flows to the 1%. Current levels of wealth inequality are unprecedented in American history. We work hard to support the lavish lifestyles of the rich.
If we could combine today's technology with 1970s levels of wealth equality, we could probably retire in 1970s level comfort by the time we reach age 40.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Online dark net markets would not be possible without cryptos. They are a pretty big win for those who believe in personal liberty.
Yes, crypto's main use is crime. Its supporters have various arguments for why crime is actually good.
Crime is relative. Homosexual relationships are criminal in a significant portion of the world, along with many other activities that you may support.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist."
Crypto's main use is crime insofar as its main use is denying monopolistic/governmental control, and anything that the government bans is a crime.
Re: Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not clear to me that there is any reasonable way to implement a truly permissionless and secure decentralized anonymous protocol without using programmatic money as you need some way to fairly allocate resources. Hell: if you stare into the soul of Bittorrent long enough trying to figure out how to make it worth your while to seed unpopular files you realize that it is essentially just digital barter screaming…
Tor relies on the IPv4 scarcity to make Sybil attacks more expensive but is slowly moving away from it e.g. the number of allowed relays per IP was recently doubled from 2 to 4 and it may get doubled in the near future again. >Roger Dingledine does claim to "personally have met" 2/3rds of them Hey said that he knew 2/3 in the beginning so 10 years+ ago and that it's no longer the case but he would like to increase th…
FWIW, he had told me that five years ago. I fully admit 5 is as close to 10 as it is to 0, though ;P. But like, even if he was stuck using an old stat the idea that he wants to know all of them isn't confidence inspiring from this angle. I asked him what he would do if someone came to him with a lead pipe and threatened him with a demand to poison his directory server and he seemed confident until I asked him the same question about his family and it frankly felt like he hadn't really considered it before, which was crazy to me.
The point being, though, that Tor isn't really a decentralized design as the cabal is too small and the community is too tight: I am just listing it as a thing that clearly isn't decentralized and anonymous / permissionless in one place (the servers) and just kind of throws up its hands at the issue of dealing with a bratty set of users; it works because, by and large, not many people want to use it and not enough people are unhappy enough that it exists to DoS it out of existence.