A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
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I'll probably regret even asking, but can someone explain (technically, not what idiots from Bloomberg or CNN write) how this shit works?
Do you need terabytes of storage just for mining hedgehog-coins or also for storing / transacting them? And what are you actually doing in the mining process?
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@DogsB said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I should probably sell an NFT for the Mona Lisa while the hype is still strong.
Filed under: what do you mean do I own it, that's not relevant to NFTs
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@topspin said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I'll probably regret even asking, but can someone explain (technically, not what idiots from Bloomberg or CNN write) how this shit works?
Do you need terabytes of storage just for mining hedgehog-coins or also for storing / transacting them? And what are you actually doing in the mining process?Aw, but twisting Bloomberg's non-technical answer into analogies is such great fun.
I imagine it as all of the miners together creating a grid. They just fill their hard disk with all the coordinates and their bets and then play "cow pat bingo".
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@Luhmann Is that an updated version of Ostenrijk (Austria)?
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@BernieTheBernie
Only when there are mountains of cow dung!
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@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Paywall-free version
I just kill the cookies before going to bloomberg. sigh - each time since you only get 1 free article.
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@dcon said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Paywall-free version
I just kill the cookies before going to bloomberg. sigh - each time since you only get 1 free article.
Sure but archive.is works almost universally and is less faffing about.
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@topspin You start with "plotting", a precomputation step similar to a rainbow table. This needs decent CPU time, about 4GB of memory, and 250ish GB of very fast storage, per plot, which takes a few hours to compute. The end result is a ~100GB file that must be in available storage at all times, but can be on e.g. trashy laptop spinning rust. At this point, you need about 100 terabytes of plots for it to be worth anything.
Periodically, "timelords" will collect transactions and create a new block, broadcasting it on the network, the same way as in Bitcoin. Instead of mining, "farming" is done by all full nodes, checking their plots for some mathematical relationship to the block -- I don't know what exactly because to read the whitepaper. The process is neither CPU nor I/O intensive and there's an early exit filter to avoid wasting time checking obviously wrong plots. If a match is found, the plot is "harvested" and if its owner is one of the first 64 to report a match they earn one Chia. There's a difficulty setting for tuning the network speed; rather than wasting more CPU like other shitcoin, it requires people have wasted more disk space.
Plots that are no longer needed can be erased independently from each other and just reduce chances of winning going forward. Since the final plot file is only written once the media it's on is likely in decent shape; however, any SSD used during the plotting process is probably scrap after a few months.
Edit: You don't need any plots to transact in Chia. You only need them for farming.
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@TwelveBaud said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
You don't need any plots to transact in Chia. You only need them for farming.
Some other things need plots, too.
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@TwelveBaud said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@topspin You start with "plotting", a precomputation step similar to a rainbow table. This needs decent CPU time, about 4GB of memory, and 250ish GB of very fast storage, per plot, which takes a few hours to compute. The end result is a ~100GB file that must be in available storage at all times, but can be on e.g. trashy laptop spinning rust. At this point, you need about 100 terabytes of plots for it to be worth anything.
Periodically, "timelords" will collect transactions and create a new block, broadcasting it on the network, the same way as in Bitcoin. Instead of mining, "farming" is done by all full nodes, checking their plots for some mathematical relationship to the block -- I don't know what exactly because to read the whitepaper. The process is neither CPU nor I/O intensive and there's an early exit filter to avoid wasting time checking obviously wrong plots. If a match is found, the plot is "harvested" and if its owner is one of the first 64 to report a match they earn one Chia. There's a difficulty setting for tuning the network speed; rather than wasting more CPU like other shitcoin, it requires people have wasted more disk space.
Plots that are no longer needed can be erased independently from each other and just reduce chances of winning going forward. Since the final plot file is only written once the media it's on is likely in decent shape; however, any SSD used during the plotting process is probably scrap after a few months.
Edit: You don't need any plots to transact in Chia. You only need them for farming.
I understand those words, and yet I still have no idea how that translates into something that's apparently worth money.
It makes less sense than Bitcoin (etc), and that's a limbo-grade bar.
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@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I understand those words, and yet I still have no idea how that translates into something that's apparently worth money.
It makes less sense than Bitcoin (etc), and that's a limbo-grade bar.It's hard to make Bitcoin, it's hard to make Chia. Thus, scarcity. People claim they're worth money. Thus, demand. There's no regulation. Thus, insanity.
Seems equivalent to me.
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@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
It makes less sense than Bitcoin (etc), and that's a limbo-grade bar.
Sounds like you mean something like this:
But bitcoin makes me rather think of this:
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@topspin think of it as real-money gambling on solitaire.
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@Gribnit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@topspin think of it as real-money gambling on solitaire.
With house edge.
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A: a decentralized currency has a council of miners.
B: how? You're going to change a for loop to a thread.sleep()?
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@DogsB said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
A: a decentralized currency has a council of miners.
B: how? You're going to change a for loop to a thread.sleep()?They’re going to suddenly improve the % of energy China makes from renewables.
The same way China improves any of its other statistics.
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@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
They’re going to suddenly improve the % of energy China makes from renewables.
Soylent Green-ing the power plants?
Their camps are full enough.
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@topspin said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
They’re going to suddenly improve the % of energy China makes from renewables.
Soylent Green-ing the power plants?
Their camps are full enough.
The Matrix wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual!
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Reminds me of a Russian parody Schmatrica. A bunch of psychos thinking they're antifascists trying to uproot the establishment and one "doctor" Elrond Smith trying to get them back into the mental ward.
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@Applied-Mediocrity reminds me of this:
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@boomzilla Let em fly their flag!
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the cryptocurrency "mine" had stolen thousands of pounds of electricity.
Electricity measured in imperial units
At least, they know the weight of the electricity delivered, in constrast to us people on the continent.
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@BernieTheBernie said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
At least, they know the weight of the electricity delivered
We used to buy it in gallons but it confused people.
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@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@BernieTheBernie said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
At least, they know the weight of the electricity delivered
We used to buy it in gallons but it confused people.
Hectares, people.
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@loopback0 said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
We used to buy it in gallons but it confused people.
You normally buy it in therms now.
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Guess it parts fools neighbors from their power, too...
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@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
2 gigawatts of power each day
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@Zerosquare said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
2 gigawatts of power each day
He writes for the poor man's Arse Technica. You have to forgive him for being technically illiterate.
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@Zerosquare said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
2 gigawatts of power each day
Wow, that’s more than 23 kilojoules every square second!
To be fair, as I sit on my arse, I do in fact sit on my arse each day as well.
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Suprised this didnt happen sooner but still a huge overreach from the banks.
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Giving weed farmers a bad name to be honest. They usually pay their bills
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@DogsB said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Giving weed farmers a bad name to be honest. They usually pay their bills
Interesting. Around here they usually bypass the electricity meter.
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@PleegWat well that's dumb. You need to maintain facade draw through the meter.
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@Gribnit With smart meters nowadays checking usage daily they might do that. Or they may not bother; after one of two harvests the neighbours will get suspicious anyway.
I believe the usual way they get find out is by helicopter patrols with heat cameras. Or, in winter, by looking at roofs.
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@DogsB said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Giving weed farmers a bad name to be honest. They usually pay their bills
Is this the same one as posted 2 days ago? If so,
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@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Or, in winter, by looking at roofs.
Certainly not in
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@Gribnit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Hectares, people.
People are obviously counted in Hectors (or Hektors keeping with the Greek spelling), a useful metric based on how many people fit in your wooden horse.
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@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I believe the usual way they get find out is by helicopter patrols with heat cameras.
This. They correlate with the accounted-for electrical draw in a district (from the power companies, who don't like handing out significant amounts of energy for free) and that's very difficult to conceal in a domestic setting. (I suppose they could also use drones now.)
If they weren't stealing the power, they'd not be committing a crime. Except against the environment I guess…
Or, in winter, by looking at roofs.
Not so common here; not enough snow days.
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@dkf said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I believe the usual way they get find out is by helicopter patrols with heat cameras.
This. They correlate with the accounted-for electrical draw in a district (from the power companies, who don't like handing out significant amounts of energy for free) and that's very difficult to conceal in a domestic setting. (I suppose they could also use drones now.)
I don't think they use drones. I'm pretty sure you are legally required to maintain line of sight to an unmanned aircraft, which puts quite a damper on the range.
I also read once that these flights can get merged into various types of training flights.
If they weren't stealing the power, they'd not be committing a crime. Except against the environment I guess…
If they weren't stealing the power, They'd probably still be breaking the zoning rules. I think I read once that in addition to police the usual team sent in these cases includes a representative of the power company and a tax inspector.
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@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
I don't think they use drones.
The artlcle mentions them using drones.
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@loopback0 Right, in the UK. I don't think they use drones here for the reasons stated.
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@PleegWat In the US, it runs into issues with expectation of privacy, search warrants, and the First Amendment. IANAL, but to a first approximation, aircraft flying a few hundred feet over your house is (more or less, depending on where you live) routine, and something that can be seen from a helicopter flying at, say, 500 feet is considered to be in public view and has no "reasonable expectation of privacy". A drone flying at 50 feet can see things the higher aircraft can't, may be invading privacy, and thus may require a search warrant.
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@HardwareGeek Drones can easily reach 500 feet, though.
At least the ones for this particular purpose can.
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@Rhywden Yeah, it's the sort of thing that a court would have to decide on a case-by-case basis, based on the specific facts of the individual case — height of the aircraft (drone or otherwise), what they found, what they were looking for when they found it, visible light vs. IR, whether there had been an attempt to conceal the evidence, etc. There may be enough case law to clearly establish the boundaries of warrantless drone searches, but I kinda doubt it, and as a non-lawyer, I'm not familiar with whatever there is. I know there's some, because I've heard real lawyers on YT talk about it.
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@TimeBandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@PleegWat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Or, in winter, by looking at roofs.
Certainly not in
Time to shovel that shit.
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@Gribnit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Time to shovel that shit.
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@TimeBandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@Gribnit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Time to shovel that shit.
Time to mount flamethrowers on the roof.