Author Topic: what I have learned today.  (Read 847227 times)

Mike J

  • Guinea Pig Person
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5225 on: 11 May, 2021, 08:34:46 pm »
Microsoft edge isn't as useless as I thought it was.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5226 on: 11 May, 2021, 08:36:45 pm »
About the Vito Russo test, described as a "gay Bechdel test".

Needs a "...and is still alive at the end of the film".

Shouldn't that come with an XKCD 609 warning?  ;)

My friend Lizzie delights in baiting me with tvtropes links, so I make an effort to pay it forward whenever reasonable.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: what I have learnt today.
« Reply #5227 on: 14 May, 2021, 08:41:40 am »
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learnt today.
« Reply #5228 on: 14 May, 2021, 12:10:59 pm »
A single Bitcoin transaction uses 707 kWh.  :o

https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cryptocurrencies/

Appalling, but I'd like to see an estimate of how much energy the traditional banking system consumes by way of comparison...

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: what I have learnt today.
« Reply #5229 on: 14 May, 2021, 01:24:15 pm »
A single Bitcoin transaction uses 707 kWh.  :o

https://www.trgdatacenters.com/most-environment-friendly-cryptocurrencies/

Appalling, but I'd like to see an estimate of how much energy the traditional banking system consumes by way of comparison...

Dunno about them, but the last time I did PBP I averaged 103W for 93 (ahem) hours.  Unless my bump of arithmetick is slipping cogs that's about 9.5 kWh.  Makes one feel a bit Tesco Value in comparison.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5230 on: 14 May, 2021, 01:48:04 pm »
Power consumption will keep growing (in theory) up to until it reaches the threshold for bitcoin (21 million – about 18.5 million have been mined to date) - once the mining effort exceeds the value, this is an effect of proof of work, of course, there's no incentive to mine more. So it's unlikely they'll mine all the bitcoin.

It's all a bit made-up, of course, but I have combined all my YACF posts-to-date to produce a non-fungible token. It's yours for £1,000,000.

Paul

  • L'enfer, c'est les autos.
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5231 on: 15 May, 2021, 02:42:53 pm »
Power consumption will keep growing (in theory) up to until it reaches the threshold for bitcoin (21 million – about 18.5 million have been mined to date) - once the mining effort exceeds the value, this is an effect of proof of work, of course, there's no incentive to mine more. So it's unlikely they'll mine all the bitcoin.

It's all a bit made-up, of course, but I have combined all my YACF posts-to-date to produce a non-fungible token. It's yours for £1,000,000.

I don't understand any of this. Do I need to?
What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5232 on: 15 May, 2021, 03:26:30 pm »
I'm not really trying to.  Presumably the power all goes in CPU churning and coms, but why it has to be so prodigal I've no idea. Smacks of bad design.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5233 on: 15 May, 2021, 04:04:44 pm »
What a multi-hyphenate is.

Seems to be quite a common usage but has passed me by until now. Designates someone with many strings to their bow, as we used to say.

So a singer-songwriter would be a single-hyphenate. A multi-hyphenate might be a singer-songwriter-trombonist-filmmaker-wizard. For example.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5234 on: 15 May, 2021, 10:35:34 pm »
There ain't half been some clever-bastards.

cygnet

  • I'm part of the association
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5235 on: 15 May, 2021, 10:45:18 pm »
Is that a new word for polymath, (for understanding by a new generation of non-scientists)?
I Said, I've Got A Big Stick

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5236 on: 15 May, 2021, 10:48:50 pm »
I'm not really trying to.  Presumably the power all goes in CPU churning and coms, but why it has to be so prodigal I've no idea. Smacks of bad design.

The whole premise of Bitcoin et al is that they ensure scarcity by the token being computationally expensive (and therefore hardware and electricity expensive) to discover.  Otherwise the person who invented it could just make up however much currency they liked, like normal money.

What I don't understand is why the transactions are so power-hungry.  Shirley once a bitcoin exists, you're just adding data to a blockchain when you exchange it?

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5237 on: 15 May, 2021, 11:19:00 pm »
The scarcity is not really the bitcoins but the rate at which the blockchain, the list of transactions, can be extended.

Adding data to the blockchain (creating new blocks) is expensive because that is a necessary part of the design. Anyone can add new blocks so the question is how does one decide which new blocks are accepted? The answer is that the longest line of blocks is accepted. If adding new blocks was cheap then I could spend some bitcoin, wait for the transaction to be accepted, then go back to the state before that transaction and create new blocks that did not include transaction -- and if I can create enough new blocks my new line would become the longest line, and I would have cancelled the transaction that spent my bitcoin. By making the process of adding blocks expensive (and bitcoin adjusts the expense as the hashing rate varies) bitcoin attempts to make it impossible for one person to create blocks faster than the majority of all people creating blocks.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5238 on: 16 May, 2021, 12:07:24 am »
Christ, who thought that was a good idea?

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5239 on: 16 May, 2021, 12:15:26 am »
Nobody knows! The inventor has an alias and has managed to keep their identity secret from the public. They also created all the inital blocks giving them a large number of bitcoin worth tens of billions today.

TheLurker

  • Goes well with magnolia.
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5240 on: 16 May, 2021, 08:50:48 am »
Christ, who thought that was a good idea?
Finestre?  See various of Ian's threads.
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5241 on: 16 May, 2021, 04:04:28 pm »
Nobody knows! The inventor has an alias and has managed to keep their identity secret from the public. They also created all the inital blocks giving them a large number of bitcoin worth tens of billions today.

Look for the dude with the massive fleet of Teslas.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5242 on: 16 May, 2021, 04:16:10 pm »
The scarcity is not really the bitcoins but the rate at which the blockchain, the list of transactions, can be extended.

Adding data to the blockchain (creating new blocks) is expensive because that is a necessary part of the design. Anyone can add new blocks so the question is how does one decide which new blocks are accepted? The answer is that the longest line of blocks is accepted. If adding new blocks was cheap then I could spend some bitcoin, wait for the transaction to be accepted, then go back to the state before that transaction and create new blocks that did not include transaction -- and if I can create enough new blocks my new line would become the longest line, and I would have cancelled the transaction that spent my bitcoin. By making the process of adding blocks expensive (and bitcoin adjusts the expense as the hashing rate varies) bitcoin attempts to make it impossible for one person to create blocks faster than the majority of all people creating blocks.

I'm not sure that I understand everything in your post, but if I understand correctly, are you suggesting that the whole Bitcoin system will one day grind to a halt under the burden of ever growing computing cost? And then, this day, what will be the value of one bitcoin? Zero?

A

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5243 on: 16 May, 2021, 07:52:32 pm »
No.  Creating, aka mining, a new block takes a significant amount of computing calculation but the bitcoin network adjusts the difficulty of the calculation every few days. If the number of miners increases then the calculation can be done more quickly and blocks will be mined more frequently. If the mining rate gets too fast the bitcoin network will respond by increasing the difficulty of the calculation and the mining rate will slow down. Similarly, if the number of miners goes down the difficulty is reduced.

Bitcoin may go zero for other reasons: regulation, loss of confidence, a better competitor, advances in cryptography, etc.

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5244 on: 16 May, 2021, 08:44:17 pm »
^^ Ah! Thank you! I reckon you should be hired by a major newspaper or TV, for explaining these sorts of things  :thumbsup:

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5245 on: 16 May, 2021, 09:15:05 pm »
Power consumption will keep growing (in theory) up to until it reaches the threshold for bitcoin (21 million – about 18.5 million have been mined to date) - once the mining effort exceeds the value, this is an effect of proof of work, of course, there's no incentive to mine more. So it's unlikely they'll mine all the bitcoin.
That's not quite right. There is an overall limit on the number of bitcoin, but miners also get bitcoin from transaction fees. A transaction might transfer a defined amount from one account to another, but it can also transfer slightly more out of the source than goes into the destination -- the difference is then available to the miner. At present miners get newly created bitcoin when they mine a block as well as transaction fees, but once all the bitcoin have been mined they will continue to get transaction fees.

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5246 on: 16 May, 2021, 09:32:35 pm »
The word taint, meaning perineum, I suppose from persons of confusion being told "'tain't that. No, 'tain't that either".
I have only encountered that being used by Leftpondians, especially those of a sub-Mason-Dixon persuasion.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5247 on: 17 May, 2021, 09:45:32 am »
Power consumption will keep growing (in theory) up to until it reaches the threshold for bitcoin (21 million – about 18.5 million have been mined to date) - once the mining effort exceeds the value, this is an effect of proof of work, of course, there's no incentive to mine more. So it's unlikely they'll mine all the bitcoin.
That's not quite right. There is an overall limit on the number of bitcoin, but miners also get bitcoin from transaction fees. A transaction might transfer a defined amount from one account to another, but it can also transfer slightly more out of the source than goes into the destination -- the difference is then available to the miner. At present miners get newly created bitcoin when they mine a block as well as transaction fees, but once all the bitcoin have been mined they will continue to get transaction fees.

Indeed, transactions will become more lucrative than mining, but I'm not convinced from what I've read that they'll mine them all in any reasonable timeframe.

The astounding thing is that it's all made-up, there nothing to a bitcoin, nothing at all other than faith wrapped in a shroud of superficial cleverness. That might be a truth of many financial instruments, but at least they have some notional fallback onto something that's real (which admittedly might turn out to a be pile of dodgy loans with little more value than IOU £1 million written in crayon by a four-year-old).

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5248 on: 18 May, 2021, 11:57:17 am »
Dr McCoy says "He's dead, Jim" (or something extremely close) TWENTY TIMES during the original series of Star Trek.
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5249 on: 18 May, 2021, 12:25:48 pm »
The astounding thing is that it's all made-up, there nothing to a bitcoin, nothing at all other than faith wrapped in a shroud of superficial cleverness.

This is the thing I really don't understand about bitcoin... From what I can gather, one bitcoin is essentially a piece/set of data that has been heavily encrypted. But the data itself is of little value - it's the encryption process that makes it unique and gives it value. Is that about right?

And does every new bitcoin have to follow on from the last bitcoin in the blockchain? Or are there multiple threads to the chain?
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."