In my sources, at ISSCC, they'll be promoting 55 J/H but also 137 GH/sec at 2.5 W, which is 18.2 J/H. I'm confused as well. I've adjusted the article to reflect this.
55J/TH is wrong, I believe Intel screwed up and wanted to say 55GH/J instead. Which actually fits the performance numbers (137/2.5 = 54.8). This ends up being 18.2W/TH = more efficient than anything else in the table.
The table and the whole conclusion is wrong. You are not calculating W/(TH/s) but (GH/s)/W. Or when using units of energy rather than work, you are not calculating J/TH but GH/J. You have confused both the division and GH vs TH.
The Intel solution is thus the most efficient among the sample you have selected.
The difference is that in this context, Intel is selling tulip-harvesting equipment. Just another large corporation finding way to make money from other organisations making money from suckers.
Energy-efficiency is the only silver lining, here. However, I fear crypto mining will simply expand until it uses the same or more energy on this new tech, as well.
That was true for a while, but I'm pretty sure I read about an ASIC specifically designed with enough memory bandwidth to handle ethereum. That would've been about 3 years ago.
If there was a cost effective ASIC for ETH then there wouldn't be warehouses full of GPUs mining for ETH and Nvidia wouldn't have had to create an LHR version of their GPUs, correct?
I think people will use whatever they can get which is profitable for them. GPUs have the added value of being usable for gaming and having a decent second-hand market. Plus, they get updated to newer technology probably sooner than most ASICs and are more approachable by outsiders than ASIC solutions.
All of that tells me that, as long as it remains profitable to mine on GPUs, supply will continue to be tight.
So instead of fixing the managerial rot, Intel has decided to announce they are enabling even MORE shitcoin mining? Seems like exactly their kind of head-in-ass decision making
Doing anything with a 335mV supply is quite impressive; and there's a lot of cojones in an implementation piling up Intel 7 custom silicon 25 deep so as to be able to use a single nine-volt 7.5-amp regulator per PCB rather than carefully distributing 7.5A @ 335mV to each chip!
I mean, I thought it was quite a fine cheap trick to pile up 3.5V LEDs 30-deep and connect unrectified 110V mains to pairs of strings in opposite directions, so the LEDs were their own voltage dividers, and the strings shone on alternate phases. This is doing the same with things much more expensive than LEDs!
Yes, the issue is that - when interrupted - you have line voltage on the ends. We had an old 10-in-line incandescent bulbs Christmas tree light, and when bulbs were burnt you were replacing them at line voltage.
If I'm not mistaken, the general difficulty algorithm for mining is scaled proportionally to available processing. The more hardware thrown at it the more difficult the problem becomes to maintain the average block rate at every ten minutes.
To say that another way: The more mining machines there is the more electricity the system automatically consumes. Crypto-mining is the ultimate consumerism but without the consumer.
I think the way bitcoin mining works is that the "miners" are getting rewarded for doing transaction processing. This consists of "clearance", to ensure that a given bitcoin fragment indeed belongs to the person spending it. However, to get rewarded for the work, you have to be first to provide the answer. The competition aspect results in wasted effort.
Next, we can look at blockchain scaling issues. One scaling problem is that the more transactions there have been, the bigger the blockchain gets, which increases the effort involved in doing transaction clearance. Another issue is that as bitcoins get increasingly fragmented, a given transaction tends to involve increasing numbers of fragments, each of which has to be cleared.
To the extent this is correct, I don't know how much it applies to other cryptocurrencies. However, anything blockchain-based has somewhat intrinsic scaling problems. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies can never replace cash and credit cards for low-value transactions. They just don't scale well enough.
Mining isn't related to block-chain nor to clearance of transactions. Mining is about proving who's right, aka trusting the process. Only once that's sorted, each block is a new round of proving who's right, can each block of transactions be processed via the block-chain.
I was of the understanding that mining was about solving a difficult maths problem, the proof of work, and from this effort spring new bitcoins. So it's related to the verification process too?
Yes, verification, correctness, proof ... it's all more names for trust in the system. Mining is not the blockchain though. The blockchain is for tracking the transactions and doesn't burn compute of itself.
They are separate functions and each can be replaced with alternative solutions.
Bitcoin wasn't intended for large scale use. It was only a concept prototype to prove a flat distributed system could work. As I understand it, all previous attempts to decentralised had fallen to gaming of the system. After all, ten minutes per block and one hour for certainty, wasn't exactly targetted at purchasing of products in a shop.
Becoming a burden on the power grid would've seemed fantastical back then. Or at the very least, successful validation.
Why is decentralization a great idea? For instance, in medieval Serbia, after the last emperor died, every bloody feudal lord minted their own coins. That was tried and tested in Europe for centuries and everyone decided that one currency per country is enough. They are in process of establishing one currency per continent. Nowdays, instead of central banks and just like former local feudal lords we should trust large anonymous cryptocurrency holders to manage our currency. No, thank you.
bigvlada, I'm not in favour of cryptocurrency, and don't fully understand the long-term implications. But, as a general principle, decentralisation tends to be a good idea. Today, much of what we compain about is due to centralisation; power being put in the hands of a few. When the human element is involved, there is always abuse. But whether decentralisation is advisable in the field of currency, I don't know and will leave it to others to comment.
Oh, on the topic of good ideas - democracy. A well functioning democracy votes on the merits of the proposals. A less well functioning democracy votes on allegiances.
Crypto-mining: Each block is a new round to vote on who is right ... by a simple majority. Sound familiar?
The principle of democracy is worth preserving. Without it, everything else will fall to corruption. Decentralised currencies won't help the slightest if there is no civility left to maintain the infrastructure that it runs on.
In much of Africa, where the vast majority don't have a bank account, and basically everyone is like a sole trader, they rely heavily on cellphones, the pre-smartphone ones, for buying and selling. Without the phone companies providing the infrastructure, and of course the phones themselves, then that way of trading would vanish. They'd be back to bartering much of the time.
Democracy is a noble principle and worth preserving, even with all its failings in practice. It's often been said that literacy and freedom of the press mean "all is safe" for democracy; but truth be told, it's now easier than ever to manipulate opinion.
I can't speak for Africa as a whole, but here in South Africa, people do have bank accounts, smartphones, some trade in stocks, and crypto is even going to be regulated by the end of 2022.
No, decentralization is not a good thing when it comes to currency. The ability to reign in inflation or combat deflation, like the Federal Reserve does in the US, is critical to having the stable currency that economies inevitably rely upon. Just look at countries like Venezuela to see what happens when the value of the currency uncontrolled.
> Do you think that cryptocurrency is doomed to instability?
Who knows, right? I think you have to get into the details of whatever crypto coin, in order to see how scalable it can be and how well it can resist volatility.
Ethereum actually has a committee that decides things like the inflation rate, not unlike how a central bank would control a fiat currency. They are/were interested in making it less attractive for investors, precisely to combat the sort of volatility that would hamper its broader adoption.
> Ethereum actually has a committee that decides things like the inflation rate,
But, a flip side of that is that you have to consider these people aren't elected or accountable. And what if interests gain dominance who have different motives.
Unless your central bank (like in the EU) is run by politicians who have zero knowledge of macro economics and tend to cater to their needs and the needs of the states (create free money so they can spend at will).
You're right. As always, control, oligarchy, and the like are always manifesting themselves under whatever system we're dealing with. Apparently, there's no way round this. Makes me sad in a way.
Mining complexity does not change with chain length, as the has is only dependant on the previous block (hence 'blockchain'). Mining complexity does change over time, depending on total hashpower of the network, in order to rate-limit block production.
As for scaling: nobody claims that rapid digital transactions in other currencies are impossible because transactions take multiple days to settle. e.g. your average EMV transaction will not actually cause a movement of funds via SWIFT (or local ACH such as CHAPS) until several business days after you 'pay' for an item. Analogous rapid transaction networks have been built atop slower 'clearing' blockchain networks, Lightning/Bitcoin boing one example.
> nobody claims that rapid digital transactions in other currencies are impossible > because transactions take multiple days to settle.
That's because there's a trusted intermediary.
The problem with crypto transactions taking a long time to settle is that there's no intermediary. So, the seller has to trust the buyer, or else the withhold the goods the buyer is paying for... in which case the buyer then has to trust the seller. This runs counter to the whole notion of crypto, which is supposed to avoid the need for trust.
> Analogous rapid transaction networks have been built atop slower > 'clearing' blockchain networks, Lightning/Bitcoin boing one example.
But then they could also function atop conventional currency or banking systems, right?
I tend to think that the energy and effort it takes is analogous to mining real gold in the mountains and the deep, and so the two are equivalent. Only the storage is different.
Exactly! But I think it's interesting from a computer science point of view. It also comes down to what is the difference between something in the real vs. a virtual realm? As we've seen, the latter can affect the former. Windows is a virtual construct but a lot of the world's work is being processed though it. A movie shot digitally has likely never touched celluloid, but certainly exists, wherever it's stored. Seemingly, crypto is abstracting away work and store of value from a real to a virtual realm. At any rate, nothing springs out of fresh air, and the cost is falling back to reality, in the form of energy.
Not sure where to add this comment, so I'll put it here. If how "good" something is, depends on how much it gives per unit of energy, then proof-of-work cryptocurrencies fail miserably. In CPUs, we remember that perf. per watt is the golden metric, and specimens that flouted this, Netburst and Bulldozer, were misguided and generally frowned upon. Can the disproportionate engery use be a sign from Nature that crypto is just plain "bad"?
I wonder what the proportion of gold mined is used in industry (e.g. PCB coating) vs. minted into ingots as a store of value is, compared to BTC mined and used in transactions vs. used as a store of value.
The thing about gold is that it *can* be used for practical purposes. So, that places a floor under its value. Whereas the exchange rate on a crypto currency could literally go to 0, if there was some massive hack or fundamental flaw found with it.
I'll admit that I sort of hate gold, as an asset. Much of the gold mining today comes at extreme environmental cost and health risks to downstream communities. So, the idea of buying a bunch of gold and just sitting on it seems rather problematic.
I've never really thought the idea of cryptocurrency was a good one, but people will assign value to some of the most silly things. Existing currencies generally represent a unit of work or effort if you want to boil them down to something more abstract. For instance, an employee of some company is paid in units of currency as an exchange for their labor which you can probably quantify in a fairly exact amount of invested energy by measuring factors like transportation costs, food input, and so forth to keep the biological systems of the employee operational. Cryptocurrencies are sort of like the automation of income generation where they farm out their effort and invested time to machinery that does something of value for them so they can then use their meat bodies to do other things at the same time to either increase income or increase pleasure.
Is it all a waste and damaging to the planet we live on to run those automated systems? Yes! Then again, humans in general are a waste and damaging to the planet and it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half or less of our current population so the planetary support structures we depend on were not so dramatically consumed and destroyed in the process of sustaining our silly whims such as our assignment of abstract value to a series of electrical pulses crunched out on e-waste, mission-specific compute hardware.
Ironically, the progress of science and industrialisation has done a lot of harm. The good it's brought about has got to be paid for---and mother earth is forking out the cash. We need to go back to a simpler mode of life, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. Perhaps we'll end up being a text-book study of some civilisation aeons hence.
"it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half or less of our current population so the planetary support structures we depend on were not so dramatically consumed and destroyed in the process of sustaining our silly whims"
People who talk this way come off as dangerous. Work on sustainability and against consumerism, planned obsolescence, and throw-away culture and the human population will eventually sort itself out on its own.
I'm pretty sure we can do both of those things at the same time since they're not mutually exclusive. Making less of ourselves is a good idea because if we don't do it in a way that we want to, external forces will do it for us and may cause far greater suffering and misery as our population declines by billions in some non-desirable, catastrophic manner like maybe, oh I dunno, because of a pandemic or something that is worse than the current one or mass starvation when we lack a planetary climate favorable to growing enough food or can't distribute what we are able to grow. Taking any other approach than encouraging people to get together and collectively churn out fewer offspring is FAR more dangerous. :D
It's the language, not the intent. The "we" and "find a way to" brings up thoughts of states seeking a 'final solution' that's not fully voluntary for all concerned. That's my implicit bias though.
A way to gracefully reduce numbers is to encourage people to put off children until in their 30s. This effectively reduces population numbers by increasing the distance between generations. There's a trade-off with increased risk of birth defects as age increases though. Among the middle of the higher income ranges yuppyieism is effectively encouraging this already, especially for professional women.
I think there's too much sensitivity around this. Nobody seems to want to tell high-birthrate countries to get their act together, yet its largely their high birthrates which are responsible for their lack of development and low standard of living. That's why I think it's much easier to focus on women's rights, in addition to all the other virtues of doing so.
When the resources of society are used up by having to feed, educate, and police a large group of children, there are few resources left over for anything else - including doing a particularly good job of those responsibilities. China figured this out. Sure, their methods were horrible, but they saw the need to cut their birth rate and the success it enabled is evident for all to see.
The US and French birthrates are higher than Thailand and Russia.
It makes sense that investment in resources in children would decrease the resources available to invest elsewhere (in the short and middle term, at least). But I don't a priori buy that lower birthrates enables economic success.
> The US did just as well as China has been doing back during the era of the US baby boom.
Yeah, but there were other factors at play, such as world-wide supply chains and production capacity having been disrupted by WWII, creating lots of new export markets for a newly industrialized and outward-looking USA.
> India's birthrate is just slight higher than Israel's
The important part is when you consider that India has like 100x as many people.
> I don't a priori buy that lower birthrates enables economic success.
This is not a theory I invented. There's some scholarship on the matter. I'm no expert, but you can dig into it if you're interested.
The main point is that we have to bend the global birth rate lower, as the current trajectory will *certainly* lead to more environmental degradation, wars, and famine (i.e. lower quality of life, for many).
> the human population will eventually sort itself out on its own.
There are lots of things that can be done to slow population growth, while simultaneously improving human rights & quality of life. For instance, end childhood marriage, everywhere. Improve girls' educational opportunities and women's rights. Increase laws against domestic violence and their enforcement. Those should be totally non-controversial, yet they're not a practical reality in many countries and regions. It's unfortunate that simply providing access to contraception is going too far for some.
Those are excellent improvements that should've been there all along, but I feel as long as the sexual instinct is present, there's going to be babies, in both first-world and developing countries. I doubt whether encouraging people to have fewer children will have much effect on the mathematics of the growth. Women's education, rights, etc. will do much; but will it be enough? Earth's population is growing at an ever-increasing rate. Only 1 billion in the 19th century, and now about 8.
And if we sink into the murky waters of fines, sterilisation, and outlawing of offspring, that leads to moral concerns. Yet if we don't find a way to bring the birth rate below the critical level, there'll be a dystopia anyway, with conflict for space, food, and resources.
Colonising other planets is one possibility, but then again, it'll just duplicate Earth's problem elsewhere. (And no interstellar travel means Mars is the only option at present.) Another possibility, perhaps a certain, critical percentage of society could volunteer never to have children.
A one-child policy could be the answer, but how can that be enforced, sensibly, in a democratic world? People are protesting about masks and vaccines. Imagine what a commotion they'll make about that.
It's unfortunate this always seems to come up in an discussion about population growth. Current birth rates in developed countries (and ever China) show that such policies aren't necessary to bring down birth rates. Incredibly, China is now struggling to *increase* birth rates!
> Women's education, rights, etc. will do much; but will it be enough?
That's not a reason not to do them. For their intrinsic value is reason enough. Slowing population growth, even a little bit, is a bonus.
We also know that development intrinsically tends to lower birth rates. So, if lower birth rates support development, then you could get into a virtuous cycle that brings them to a sustainable level.
Look, all population models show birth rates eventually leveling off. The way I see it is that we want to reach that leveling point sooner, and with a lot less war and famine.
So, I'm in favor of focusing on the things we *can* do that will produce results, before fretting too much about whether the results will be big enough or come soon enough. In some very real ways, the results are *already* too late. Still, doing anything is better than nothing.
Concerning women's rights, etc., that's not one for debate of course, as any human right. But I was sceptical of the idea that education reduces offspring drastically. In any case, global birth rate has fallen over the decades and will continue to fall, so perhaps there's nothing to worry about. Let Nature take care of business! Still, I agree that any drop in the bucket of improvement is better that none and, just like IPC, adds up over time.
> I was sceptical of the idea that education reduces offspring drastically.
It's been well-documented. Women with more education tend to delay marriage and childbirth, they have their own resources and therefore are less tied to relationships in which they're more likely to have unwanted pregnancies, and they're likely to know more about the virtues of limiting their family size so their kids can receive the same kind of education they had (or better).
> global birth rate has fallen over the decades and will continue to fall, > so perhaps there's nothing to worry about. Let Nature take care of business!
That might sound good, until you actually consider what it means in practice. In a natural population of animals, population will grow to a point that they exhaust their food source and famine reduces their numbers. However, humans aren't subject to natural limits in the same way. We modify our environment to support our growing numbers, until the scale of the problem becomes truly massive. And then we fight. So, the idea of just "letting nature take its course" is signing up for millions of unnecessary deaths, immeasurable suffering, and yet further environmental degradation. That's why it matters and why it's a problem worth trying to get ahead of.
> Yet if we don't find a way to bring the birth rate below the critical level, > there'll be a dystopia anyway, with conflict for space, food, and resources.
This is already happening. People just can't the forest for the trees, but there have already been conflicts triggered by population growth, climate change, and access to natural resources. This trend will only increase.
> Colonising other planets is one possibility
No, it's not. People need to stop saying this. It's impractical to move any substantial fraction of Earth's population off-world, even if it were possible to somehow create self-sustaining *and* self-growing colonies elsewhere.
Maybe we could eventually get enough colonies off-world that humanity's fate won't be tied to that of the Earth, but it's not a solution to *any* of the big problems we currently face.
Again, I agree it's better mending the problem here and now, instead of expecting some speculative bandage to do so. And even if it were feasible, which I expect it will be at some point, it would just duplicate Earth's problem in process of time. Man has a history of ill using resources for his own comfort and whims.
> it would just duplicate Earth's problem in process of time.
That's looking a step too far ahead, for me. I stop at the point where I see it's infeasible.
Maybe (though I doubt it), whatever product of our civilization that settles the cosmos will learn to be more harmonious. Like cells in a body. Sure, you'll have some malignant tumors, but that's not such a frequent occurrence that most people can't live a decent life, well past their reproductive years.
By infeasible, I meant the idea of space and planetary colonies being a solution to the problems of humans on Earth.
However hard it becomes to live on Earth, and however bad our environmental degradation gets, it's always going to be a lot cheaper and easier to live here than anywhere else in our solar system.
...I mean, until the Sun expands and cooks us, obviously. But that's many millions of years in the future, when I'm primarily concerned about the next couple centuries.
I also fear that when colonisation starts happening, money's going to play a role. First with space tourism, then with moving there. There'll be some big commission for "off-world" real-estate agents.
When Earth goes down with the Sun, we'll have to be long gone, or face baking in the oven like a tray of overdone biscuits. I tend to think interstellar travel will be a reality someday. We just need a successor of general relativity to open the doors. Of course, below FTL, always!
The point about colonization is that it only going to be attainable for Earth's elite. Unlike these sub-obital joy rides that have started happening, it's going to cost the equivalent of $Millions. So, it'll only be accessible for << 1% of the population. Everyone else will be stuck on the ground.
"Perhaps moving the entire planet into a different orbit could help us avoid the boiling of the oceans. It's unorthodox, but not entirely off-the-wall, says astrophysicist Ethan Siegel."
Yeah, interesting to think about. Especially since it's a project that would probably take millennia to complete. Still, more feasible than terraforming Mars.
The idealist in me hopes for this, but the weight of history makes me sigh.
(I sometimes imagine, humorously, that we're some prototype build of a Maker or evolution, and the newer version, which has all our bugs fixed and libraries updated, will be so much better than us, so much more beautiful, particularly in spirit. I picture that if we were to catch a glimpse of their society, it would astound us. All our bad traits diminished. Like man and woman in their best moments, but even better.)
Interesting idea, but I think technology has far outpaced the realm of evolution. Space-faring humans will be heavily-engineered. Or, maybe not even humans at all. Maybe they'll be our AI progeny or successors.
Just to expand on the evolution comment, I think humans are best-adapted to co-exist at a tribal or village scale. We don't do all that well in groups too large to know everyone's name, nor do we seem to be able to handle technologies like social media particularly well.
Well, let's hope they archive the homo-sapiens-1.0 codebase, otherwise they'll be in big trouble if they muck up it all up.
"humans are best-adapted to co-exist at a tribal or village scale"
True. Perhaps that's why people have observed they feel more alone in a big city, whereas in smaller towns, everyone seems to know one another. (And each other's business too!) Concerning social media's nonsensicalness, I can vouch for that myself. Confusing, complicated, and doubtless harmful, so much information coming from all sides.
Currencies are potentially useful for two things: exchanging and storing value. Volatility makes a currency poor at storing value. In fiat currencies, the most common example given is hyper-inflation. In cryptocurrencies, you can also have cases of considerable deflation, which is self reinforcing as investors flock to buy it up, thereby reducing liquidity and increasing transaction costs.
> it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half
Obviously, population growth needs to slow. But we *also* have to find ways to reduce use of non-renewable resources and other environmental impacts we all have. That's the project of the century.
Bitcoin mining is the most wasteful use of wafers ever. As has already been commented, it doesn't actually benefit bitcoin or mining in any way, it just shifts the amount of coins mined to go to the players who have the highest mining power.
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COAk - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
I am confused as to how they got to 55J/TH, because given their numbers : 137GH/S @ 2.5J/S, this amount to 18.2J/TH?Ian Cutress - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
In my sources, at ISSCC, they'll be promoting 55 J/H but also 137 GH/sec at 2.5 W, which is 18.2 J/H. I'm confused as well. I've adjusted the article to reflect this.Zizy - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
55J/TH is wrong, I believe Intel screwed up and wanted to say 55GH/J instead. Which actually fits the performance numbers (137/2.5 = 54.8). This ends up being 18.2W/TH = more efficient than anything else in the table.Ian Cutress - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
FWIW, source: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/148416683925...Bigos - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
The table and the whole conclusion is wrong. You are not calculating W/(TH/s) but (GH/s)/W. Or when using units of energy rather than work, you are not calculating J/TH but GH/J. You have confused both the division and GH vs TH.The Intel solution is thus the most efficient among the sample you have selected.
Bigos - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
If the confusion is on the source side I apologize for my tone, however it is good to verify the sources you are using.baka_toroi - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Intel in the shitcoin business. What a time to be alive.DenverLett - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Intel is jumping into the tulip market next.Spunjji - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
The difference is that in this context, Intel is selling tulip-harvesting equipment. Just another large corporation finding way to make money from other organisations making money from suckers.mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
Energy-efficiency is the only silver lining, here. However, I fear crypto mining will simply expand until it uses the same or more energy on this new tech, as well.Freeb!rd - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
These are "Tulip Lake" processors...mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
Congratulations! I think you just won the discussion thread!GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
10/10!CrystalCowboy - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Any chance they could build a specialized chip for Ethereum and break the miner demand for graphics cards?rahrah - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
With Ethereum headed for PoS (yeah, I know, not certain), it's very unlikely anyone would create an ASIC for it.Spunjji - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
IIRC Ethereum is also designed specifically to make designing an SIC for it un-economicalSpunjji - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
ASIC*mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
That was true for a while, but I'm pretty sure I read about an ASIC specifically designed with enough memory bandwidth to handle ethereum. That would've been about 3 years ago.Freeb!rd - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
If there was a cost effective ASIC for ETH then there wouldn't be warehouses full of GPUs mining for ETH and Nvidia wouldn't have had to create an LHR version of their GPUs, correct?mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
I think people will use whatever they can get which is profitable for them. GPUs have the added value of being usable for gaming and having a decent second-hand market. Plus, they get updated to newer technology probably sooner than most ASICs and are more approachable by outsiders than ASIC solutions.All of that tells me that, as long as it remains profitable to mine on GPUs, supply will continue to be tight.
onewingedangel - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Great way for Intel to sell test wafers on a developing process.shabby - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Isn't that what the mobile chips are for?James5mith - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
"Sometimes in a gold rush, it’s those that sell the axes* that make the money."*Pickaxes, not axes.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
In this case, I absolutely mean axes.waterdog - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
I understood and appreciated it. :)FullmetalTitan - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
So instead of fixing the managerial rot, Intel has decided to announce they are enabling even MORE shitcoin mining?Seems like exactly their kind of head-in-ass decision making
Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Pop the bubble! Pop the bubble!Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
I'm not sure if the spam filter's changed but I like this explanationhttps://www.twitch.tv/videos/1259714412?t=00h57m24...
TomWomack - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Doing anything with a 335mV supply is quite impressive; and there's a lot of cojones in an implementation piling up Intel 7 custom silicon 25 deep so as to be able to use a single nine-volt 7.5-amp regulator per PCB rather than carefully distributing 7.5A @ 335mV to each chip!TomWomack - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
I mean, I thought it was quite a fine cheap trick to pile up 3.5V LEDs 30-deep and connect unrectified 110V mains to pairs of strings in opposite directions, so the LEDs were their own voltage dividers, and the strings shone on alternate phases. This is doing the same with things much more expensive than LEDs!Calin - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Yes, the issue is that - when interrupted - you have line voltage on the ends.We had an old 10-in-line incandescent bulbs Christmas tree light, and when bulbs were burnt you were replacing them at line voltage.
Blastdoor - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
Now we just need an ASIC to render, at 60 fps and in 8k, a raytraced video of ditches being dug and refilled.boozed - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
INTEL's in on the scam now?!Just f-ing kill me.
Blastdoor - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Hopefully that means the whole thing is about to implode.Spunjji - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
They're building turbo jet-skis, ramps to go with them, and robot sharks for you to leap overevanh - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
If I'm not mistaken, the general difficulty algorithm for mining is scaled proportionally to available processing. The more hardware thrown at it the more difficult the problem becomes to maintain the average block rate at every ten minutes.To say that another way: The more mining machines there is the more electricity the system automatically consumes. Crypto-mining is the ultimate consumerism but without the consumer.
mode_13h - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
I think the way bitcoin mining works is that the "miners" are getting rewarded for doing transaction processing. This consists of "clearance", to ensure that a given bitcoin fragment indeed belongs to the person spending it. However, to get rewarded for the work, you have to be first to provide the answer. The competition aspect results in wasted effort.Next, we can look at blockchain scaling issues. One scaling problem is that the more transactions there have been, the bigger the blockchain gets, which increases the effort involved in doing transaction clearance. Another issue is that as bitcoins get increasingly fragmented, a given transaction tends to involve increasing numbers of fragments, each of which has to be cleared.
To the extent this is correct, I don't know how much it applies to other cryptocurrencies. However, anything blockchain-based has somewhat intrinsic scaling problems. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies can never replace cash and credit cards for low-value transactions. They just don't scale well enough.
GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Are you saying that the blockchain's time-complexity is a bit like a linked list?evanh - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Mining isn't related to block-chain nor to clearance of transactions. Mining is about proving who's right, aka trusting the process. Only once that's sorted, each block is a new round of proving who's right, can each block of transactions be processed via the block-chain.GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
I was of the understanding that mining was about solving a difficult maths problem, the proof of work, and from this effort spring new bitcoins. So it's related to the verification process too?evanh - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Yes, verification, correctness, proof ... it's all more names for trust in the system. Mining is not the blockchain though. The blockchain is for tracking the transactions and doesn't burn compute of itself.They are separate functions and each can be replaced with alternative solutions.
evanh - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Bitcoin wasn't intended for large scale use. It was only a concept prototype to prove a flat distributed system could work. As I understand it, all previous attempts to decentralised had fallen to gaming of the system. After all, ten minutes per block and one hour for certainty, wasn't exactly targetted at purchasing of products in a shop.Becoming a burden on the power grid would've seemed fantastical back then. Or at the very least, successful validation.
GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Yes, only of late has it been taking off as "real money." The horrible energy use is to be deplored, but the decentralisation is a great idea.bigvlada - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Why is decentralization a great idea? For instance, in medieval Serbia, after the last emperor died, every bloody feudal lord minted their own coins. That was tried and tested in Europe for centuries and everyone decided that one currency per country is enough. They are in process of establishing one currency per continent.Nowdays, instead of central banks and just like former local feudal lords we should trust large anonymous cryptocurrency holders to manage our currency. No, thank you.
GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
bigvlada, I'm not in favour of cryptocurrency, and don't fully understand the long-term implications. But, as a general principle, decentralisation tends to be a good idea. Today, much of what we compain about is due to centralisation; power being put in the hands of a few. When the human element is involved, there is always abuse. But whether decentralisation is advisable in the field of currency, I don't know and will leave it to others to comment.evanh - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Oh, on the topic of good ideas - democracy. A well functioning democracy votes on the merits of the proposals. A less well functioning democracy votes on allegiances.Crypto-mining: Each block is a new round to vote on who is right ... by a simple majority. Sound familiar?
The principle of democracy is worth preserving. Without it, everything else will fall to corruption. Decentralised currencies won't help the slightest if there is no civility left to maintain the infrastructure that it runs on.
In much of Africa, where the vast majority don't have a bank account, and basically everyone is like a sole trader, they rely heavily on cellphones, the pre-smartphone ones, for buying and selling. Without the phone companies providing the infrastructure, and of course the phones themselves, then that way of trading would vanish. They'd be back to bartering much of the time.
GeoffreyA - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
Democracy is a noble principle and worth preserving, even with all its failings in practice. It's often been said that literacy and freedom of the press mean "all is safe" for democracy; but truth be told, it's now easier than ever to manipulate opinion.I can't speak for Africa as a whole, but here in South Africa, people do have bank accounts, smartphones, some trade in stocks, and crypto is even going to be regulated by the end of 2022.
vlad42 - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
No, decentralization is not a good thing when it comes to currency. The ability to reign in inflation or combat deflation, like the Federal Reserve does in the US, is critical to having the stable currency that economies inevitably rely upon. Just look at countries like Venezuela to see what happens when the value of the currency uncontrolled.GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
Thanks. Do you think that cryptocurrency is doomed to instability?mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
> Do you think that cryptocurrency is doomed to instability?Who knows, right? I think you have to get into the details of whatever crypto coin, in order to see how scalable it can be and how well it can resist volatility.
Ethereum actually has a committee that decides things like the inflation rate, not unlike how a central bank would control a fiat currency. They are/were interested in making it less attractive for investors, precisely to combat the sort of volatility that would hamper its broader adoption.
mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
> Ethereum actually has a committee that decides things like the inflation rate,But, a flip side of that is that you have to consider these people aren't elected or accountable. And what if interests gain dominance who have different motives.
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
As the writer of Ecclesiasties saith, "There is no new thing under the sun."GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
Recently, they've been switching to a proof-of-stake model as well, which supposedly used less energy. I'd imagine something else would go up.johanpm - Saturday, February 12, 2022 - link
Unless your central bank (like in the EU) is run by politicians who have zero knowledge of macro economics and tend to cater to their needs and the needs of the states (create free money so they can spend at will).evanh - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Main point is it had its day, it needs to die now.mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> decentralisation is a great idea.It's also a myth. Look at who controls the core bitcoin software/codebase. They're the ones with the real power.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
You're right. As always, control, oligarchy, and the like are always manifesting themselves under whatever system we're dealing with. Apparently, there's no way round this. Makes me sad in a way.edzieba - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Mining complexity does not change with chain length, as the has is only dependant on the previous block (hence 'blockchain'). Mining complexity does change over time, depending on total hashpower of the network, in order to rate-limit block production.As for scaling: nobody claims that rapid digital transactions in other currencies are impossible because transactions take multiple days to settle. e.g. your average EMV transaction will not actually cause a movement of funds via SWIFT (or local ACH such as CHAPS) until several business days after you 'pay' for an item. Analogous rapid transaction networks have been built atop slower 'clearing' blockchain networks, Lightning/Bitcoin boing one example.
mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> nobody claims that rapid digital transactions in other currencies are impossible> because transactions take multiple days to settle.
That's because there's a trusted intermediary.
The problem with crypto transactions taking a long time to settle is that there's no intermediary. So, the seller has to trust the buyer, or else the withhold the goods the buyer is paying for... in which case the buyer then has to trust the seller. This runs counter to the whole notion of crypto, which is supposed to avoid the need for trust.
> Analogous rapid transaction networks have been built atop slower
> 'clearing' blockchain networks, Lightning/Bitcoin boing one example.
But then they could also function atop conventional currency or banking systems, right?
Lindegren - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
In the EU, instant banking is taking off. in practice you can transfer funds between banks in realtime. Pretty cool :)I would be surprised if it doen't go global, after the kinks of EU rollout have been ironed out
boozed - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
You are not mistakenFindecanor - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - link
So. I have now added Intel to the list of brands NOT to purchase of in the future.bob27 - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
From the table: Intel, TSMC, Samsung. Who are you going to get your next processor from? Global Foundries?Samus - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
WHY ARE WE MAKING ASICS TO MINE FAKE MONEY!?!?GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
I tend to think that the energy and effort it takes is analogous to mining real gold in the mountains and the deep, and so the two are equivalent. Only the storage is different.Blastdoor - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Except that gold actually exists and can be used for productive purposes.GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Exactly! But I think it's interesting from a computer science point of view. It also comes down to what is the difference between something in the real vs. a virtual realm? As we've seen, the latter can affect the former. Windows is a virtual construct but a lot of the world's work is being processed though it. A movie shot digitally has likely never touched celluloid, but certainly exists, wherever it's stored. Seemingly, crypto is abstracting away work and store of value from a real to a virtual realm. At any rate, nothing springs out of fresh air, and the cost is falling back to reality, in the form of energy.GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
Not sure where to add this comment, so I'll put it here. If how "good" something is, depends on how much it gives per unit of energy, then proof-of-work cryptocurrencies fail miserably. In CPUs, we remember that perf. per watt is the golden metric, and specimens that flouted this, Netburst and Bulldozer, were misguided and generally frowned upon. Can the disproportionate engery use be a sign from Nature that crypto is just plain "bad"?edzieba - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
I wonder what the proportion of gold mined is used in industry (e.g. PCB coating) vs. minted into ingots as a store of value is, compared to BTC mined and used in transactions vs. used as a store of value.mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
The thing about gold is that it *can* be used for practical purposes. So, that places a floor under its value. Whereas the exchange rate on a crypto currency could literally go to 0, if there was some massive hack or fundamental flaw found with it.I'll admit that I sort of hate gold, as an asset. Much of the gold mining today comes at extreme environmental cost and health risks to downstream communities. So, the idea of buying a bunch of gold and just sitting on it seems rather problematic.
Ian Cutress - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
A question you should have asked 10 years ago.PeachNCream - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
I've never really thought the idea of cryptocurrency was a good one, but people will assign value to some of the most silly things. Existing currencies generally represent a unit of work or effort if you want to boil them down to something more abstract. For instance, an employee of some company is paid in units of currency as an exchange for their labor which you can probably quantify in a fairly exact amount of invested energy by measuring factors like transportation costs, food input, and so forth to keep the biological systems of the employee operational. Cryptocurrencies are sort of like the automation of income generation where they farm out their effort and invested time to machinery that does something of value for them so they can then use their meat bodies to do other things at the same time to either increase income or increase pleasure.Is it all a waste and damaging to the planet we live on to run those automated systems? Yes! Then again, humans in general are a waste and damaging to the planet and it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half or less of our current population so the planetary support structures we depend on were not so dramatically consumed and destroyed in the process of sustaining our silly whims such as our assignment of abstract value to a series of electrical pulses crunched out on e-waste, mission-specific compute hardware.
GeoffreyA - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
Ironically, the progress of science and industrialisation has done a lot of harm. The good it's brought about has got to be paid for---and mother earth is forking out the cash. We need to go back to a simpler mode of life, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. Perhaps we'll end up being a text-book study of some civilisation aeons hence.mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> We need to go back to a simpler mode of lifeYou mean like chopping down & burning lots of trees? No, that doesn't scale...
bob27 - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
"it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half or less of our current population so the planetary support structures we depend on were not so dramatically consumed and destroyed in the process of sustaining our silly whims"People who talk this way come off as dangerous. Work on sustainability and against consumerism, planned obsolescence, and throw-away culture and the human population will eventually sort itself out on its own.
PeachNCream - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
I'm pretty sure we can do both of those things at the same time since they're not mutually exclusive. Making less of ourselves is a good idea because if we don't do it in a way that we want to, external forces will do it for us and may cause far greater suffering and misery as our population declines by billions in some non-desirable, catastrophic manner like maybe, oh I dunno, because of a pandemic or something that is worse than the current one or mass starvation when we lack a planetary climate favorable to growing enough food or can't distribute what we are able to grow. Taking any other approach than encouraging people to get together and collectively churn out fewer offspring is FAR more dangerous. :Dbob27 - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
It's the language, not the intent. The "we" and "find a way to" brings up thoughts of states seeking a 'final solution' that's not fully voluntary for all concerned. That's my implicit bias though.A way to gracefully reduce numbers is to encourage people to put off children until in their 30s. This effectively reduces population numbers by increasing the distance between generations. There's a trade-off with increased risk of birth defects as age increases though. Among the middle of the higher income ranges yuppyieism is effectively encouraging this already, especially for professional women.
mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> It's the language, not the intent.I think there's too much sensitivity around this. Nobody seems to want to tell high-birthrate countries to get their act together, yet its largely their high birthrates which are responsible for their lack of development and low standard of living. That's why I think it's much easier to focus on women's rights, in addition to all the other virtues of doing so.
When the resources of society are used up by having to feed, educate, and police a large group of children, there are few resources left over for anything else - including doing a particularly good job of those responsibilities. China figured this out. Sure, their methods were horrible, but they saw the need to cut their birth rate and the success it enabled is evident for all to see.
bob27 - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
The US did just as well as China has been doing back during the era of the US baby boom.India's birthrate is just slight higher than Israel's: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings...
The US and French birthrates are higher than Thailand and Russia.
It makes sense that investment in resources in children would decrease the resources available to invest elsewhere (in the short and middle term, at least). But I don't a priori buy that lower birthrates enables economic success.
mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
> The US did just as well as China has been doing back during the era of the US baby boom.Yeah, but there were other factors at play, such as world-wide supply chains and production capacity having been disrupted by WWII, creating lots of new export markets for a newly industrialized and outward-looking USA.
> India's birthrate is just slight higher than Israel's
The important part is when you consider that India has like 100x as many people.
> I don't a priori buy that lower birthrates enables economic success.
This is not a theory I invented. There's some scholarship on the matter. I'm no expert, but you can dig into it if you're interested.
The main point is that we have to bend the global birth rate lower, as the current trajectory will *certainly* lead to more environmental degradation, wars, and famine (i.e. lower quality of life, for many).
mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> the human population will eventually sort itself out on its own.There are lots of things that can be done to slow population growth, while simultaneously improving human rights & quality of life. For instance, end childhood marriage, everywhere. Improve girls' educational opportunities and women's rights. Increase laws against domestic violence and their enforcement. Those should be totally non-controversial, yet they're not a practical reality in many countries and regions. It's unfortunate that simply providing access to contraception is going too far for some.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
Those are excellent improvements that should've been there all along, but I feel as long as the sexual instinct is present, there's going to be babies, in both first-world and developing countries. I doubt whether encouraging people to have fewer children will have much effect on the mathematics of the growth. Women's education, rights, etc. will do much; but will it be enough? Earth's population is growing at an ever-increasing rate. Only 1 billion in the 19th century, and now about 8.And if we sink into the murky waters of fines, sterilisation, and outlawing of offspring, that leads to moral concerns. Yet if we don't find a way to bring the birth rate below the critical level, there'll be a dystopia anyway, with conflict for space, food, and resources.
Colonising other planets is one possibility, but then again, it'll just duplicate Earth's problem elsewhere. (And no interstellar travel means Mars is the only option at present.) Another possibility, perhaps a certain, critical percentage of society could volunteer never to have children.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
A one-child policy could be the answer, but how can that be enforced, sensibly, in a democratic world? People are protesting about masks and vaccines. Imagine what a commotion they'll make about that.mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
> A one-child policy could be the answerIt's unfortunate this always seems to come up in an discussion about population growth. Current birth rates in developed countries (and ever China) show that such policies aren't necessary to bring down birth rates. Incredibly, China is now struggling to *increase* birth rates!
mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
Oops, that should be: "(and even China)"GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
Agreed.mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
> Women's education, rights, etc. will do much; but will it be enough?That's not a reason not to do them. For their intrinsic value is reason enough. Slowing population growth, even a little bit, is a bonus.
We also know that development intrinsically tends to lower birth rates. So, if lower birth rates support development, then you could get into a virtuous cycle that brings them to a sustainable level.
Look, all population models show birth rates eventually leveling off. The way I see it is that we want to reach that leveling point sooner, and with a lot less war and famine.
So, I'm in favor of focusing on the things we *can* do that will produce results, before fretting too much about whether the results will be big enough or come soon enough. In some very real ways, the results are *already* too late. Still, doing anything is better than nothing.
GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
Concerning women's rights, etc., that's not one for debate of course, as any human right. But I was sceptical of the idea that education reduces offspring drastically. In any case, global birth rate has fallen over the decades and will continue to fall, so perhaps there's nothing to worry about. Let Nature take care of business! Still, I agree that any drop in the bucket of improvement is better that none and, just like IPC, adds up over time.mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
> I was sceptical of the idea that education reduces offspring drastically.It's been well-documented. Women with more education tend to delay marriage and childbirth, they have their own resources and therefore are less tied to relationships in which they're more likely to have unwanted pregnancies, and they're likely to know more about the virtues of limiting their family size so their kids can receive the same kind of education they had (or better).
> global birth rate has fallen over the decades and will continue to fall,
> so perhaps there's nothing to worry about. Let Nature take care of business!
That might sound good, until you actually consider what it means in practice. In a natural population of animals, population will grow to a point that they exhaust their food source and famine reduces their numbers. However, humans aren't subject to natural limits in the same way. We modify our environment to support our growing numbers, until the scale of the problem becomes truly massive. And then we fight. So, the idea of just "letting nature take its course" is signing up for millions of unnecessary deaths, immeasurable suffering, and yet further environmental degradation. That's why it matters and why it's a problem worth trying to get ahead of.
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
Well said.mode_13h - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
> Yet if we don't find a way to bring the birth rate below the critical level,> there'll be a dystopia anyway, with conflict for space, food, and resources.
This is already happening. People just can't the forest for the trees, but there have already been conflicts triggered by population growth, climate change, and access to natural resources. This trend will only increase.
> Colonising other planets is one possibility
No, it's not. People need to stop saying this. It's impractical to move any substantial fraction of Earth's population off-world, even if it were possible to somehow create self-sustaining *and* self-growing colonies elsewhere.
Maybe we could eventually get enough colonies off-world that humanity's fate won't be tied to that of the Earth, but it's not a solution to *any* of the big problems we currently face.
GeoffreyA - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
Again, I agree it's better mending the problem here and now, instead of expecting some speculative bandage to do so. And even if it were feasible, which I expect it will be at some point, it would just duplicate Earth's problem in process of time. Man has a history of ill using resources for his own comfort and whims.mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
> it would just duplicate Earth's problem in process of time.That's looking a step too far ahead, for me. I stop at the point where I see it's infeasible.
Maybe (though I doubt it), whatever product of our civilization that settles the cosmos will learn to be more harmonious. Like cells in a body. Sure, you'll have some malignant tumors, but that's not such a frequent occurrence that most people can't live a decent life, well past their reproductive years.
mode_13h - Monday, January 24, 2022 - link
By infeasible, I meant the idea of space and planetary colonies being a solution to the problems of humans on Earth.However hard it becomes to live on Earth, and however bad our environmental degradation gets, it's always going to be a lot cheaper and easier to live here than anywhere else in our solar system.
...I mean, until the Sun expands and cooks us, obviously. But that's many millions of years in the future, when I'm primarily concerned about the next couple centuries.
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
I also fear that when colonisation starts happening, money's going to play a role. First with space tourism, then with moving there. There'll be some big commission for "off-world" real-estate agents.When Earth goes down with the Sun, we'll have to be long gone, or face baking in the oven like a tray of overdone biscuits. I tend to think interstellar travel will be a reality someday. We just need a successor of general relativity to open the doors. Of course, below FTL, always!
mode_13h - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
The point about colonization is that it only going to be attainable for Earth's elite. Unlike these sub-obital joy rides that have started happening, it's going to cost the equivalent of $Millions. So, it'll only be accessible for << 1% of the population. Everyone else will be stuck on the ground.GeoffreyA - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
"it only going to be attainable for Earth's elite"Even with space. How sad but true.
bob27 - Saturday, January 29, 2022 - link
"...I mean, until the Sun expands and cooks us, obviously."There are plausible mid-term solutions to that problem: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/astrophysi...
mode_13h - Monday, January 31, 2022 - link
For those who don't want to click:"Perhaps moving the entire planet into a different orbit could help us avoid the boiling of the oceans. It's unorthodox, but not entirely off-the-wall, says astrophysicist Ethan Siegel."
Yeah, interesting to think about. Especially since it's a project that would probably take millennia to complete. Still, more feasible than terraforming Mars.
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
The idealist in me hopes for this, but the weight of history makes me sigh.(I sometimes imagine, humorously, that we're some prototype build of a Maker or evolution, and the newer version, which has all our bugs fixed and libraries updated, will be so much better than us, so much more beautiful, particularly in spirit. I picture that if we were to catch a glimpse of their society, it would astound us. All our bad traits diminished. Like man and woman in their best moments, but even better.)
GeoffreyA - Wednesday, January 26, 2022 - link
("The idealist in me" responding to your comment about our future being more harmonius; the comments seem to have got mixed up a bit.)mode_13h - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
Interesting idea, but I think technology has far outpaced the realm of evolution. Space-faring humans will be heavily-engineered. Or, maybe not even humans at all. Maybe they'll be our AI progeny or successors.mode_13h - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
Just to expand on the evolution comment, I think humans are best-adapted to co-exist at a tribal or village scale. We don't do all that well in groups too large to know everyone's name, nor do we seem to be able to handle technologies like social media particularly well.GeoffreyA - Thursday, January 27, 2022 - link
Well, let's hope they archive the homo-sapiens-1.0 codebase, otherwise they'll be in big trouble if they muck up it all up."humans are best-adapted to co-exist at a tribal or village scale"
True. Perhaps that's why people have observed they feel more alone in a big city, whereas in smaller towns, everyone seems to know one another. (And each other's business too!) Concerning social media's nonsensicalness, I can vouch for that myself. Confusing, complicated, and doubtless harmful, so much information coming from all sides.
mode_13h - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
> Existing currencies generally represent ...Currencies are potentially useful for two things: exchanging and storing value. Volatility makes a currency poor at storing value. In fiat currencies, the most common example given is hyper-inflation. In cryptocurrencies, you can also have cases of considerable deflation, which is self reinforcing as investors flock to buy it up, thereby reducing liquidity and increasing transaction costs.
> it would be nice if we could find a way to gracefully reduce our numbers to about half
Obviously, population growth needs to slow. But we *also* have to find ways to reduce use of non-renewable resources and other environmental impacts we all have. That's the project of the century.
Leeea - Saturday, January 22, 2022 - link
Pretty funny that Intel comes out with this right as bitcoin dies.ET - Sunday, January 23, 2022 - link
Bitcoin mining is the most wasteful use of wafers ever. As has already been commented, it doesn't actually benefit bitcoin or mining in any way, it just shifts the amount of coins mined to go to the players who have the highest mining power.