<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: DINKDINK</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DINKDINK</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2026 11:28:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=DINKDINK" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[Quantum Hardening Bitcoin: Cryptographers init PQC engineering and review]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://lclhost.org/blog/post-quantum-cryptography-group/">https://lclhost.org/blog/post-quantum-cryptography-group/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950231">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950231</a></p>
<p>Points: 1</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:59:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://lclhost.org/blog/post-quantum-cryptography-group/</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950231</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950231</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Given the public ledger of Bitcoin, I would hardly say it has "censorship resistance".<p>Conflates two orthogonal issues: Identifiable payment vectors and publishing preservation / ability to be censored.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:54:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976060</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976060</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976060</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The cryptographic properties of an L402's HMAC provide stateless authentication/verification which sub services can then be provisioned with payments to compose API calls in novel ways.<p>E.g. 
Prior to L402, services needed to conglomerate into siloed ecosystems because there's the need for statefull authentication (Backend: Is this user who is requesting inferences allowed to run this query? How much credit account balance do they have remaining? You third party app have to integrate with me if you want to my users to be able to make calls to your module)<p>Post L402:
A stateless service can compose a list of service calls (which all operate independently -- without the lack of competition, costs of integration, and politics of service<>module app ecosystem -- Read OpenAI etc) to potentially 100s of services to produce the broad number of API results needed fulfill the users request.  Detailed explanation and examples are provided by the company who published the FOSS L402 spec here: <a href="https://youtu.be/6u1G8QIDuNU?t=206" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/6u1G8QIDuNU?t=206</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:48:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976016</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976016</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40976016</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>There is no such thing as "wasted energy".<p>Your argument's basis is detached from reality:
<a href="https://orientalnewsng.com/global-gas-flare-heightened-by-150-bcm-in-2019-world-bank/" rel="nofollow">https://orientalnewsng.com/global-gas-flare-heightened-by-15...</a><p>Thankfully, there are market participants who are capturing this previously-wasted energy and putting it to use: <a href="https://hashrateindex.com/blog/flared-gas-bitcoin-mining-101/" rel="nofollow">https://hashrateindex.com/blog/flared-gas-bitcoin-mining-101...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:28:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40975895</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40975895</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40975895</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>comments are focusing on the protocol's message content which is not the source of the ability to track broadcasters.  The ability comes from detecting nuances in the RF signal:<p>>BLE [snip] imperfections are introduced by the shared I/Q frontend of the chipset (Figure 1). They result in two measurable
metrics in BLE and WiFi transmissions: Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) and I/Q imperfections, specifically: I/Q offset and I/Q imbalance.<p>links to the paper:<p><a href="https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~nibhaska/papers/sp22_paper.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~nibhaska/papers/sp22_paper.pdf</a><p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360655420_Evaluating_Physical-Layer_BLE_Location_Tracking_Attacks_on_Mobile_Devices/link/6283cafeb2548471fee26168/download" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360655420_Evaluatin...</a><p>Git repo: <a href="https://github.com/ucsdsysnet/blephytracking" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ucsdsysnet/blephytracking</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:13:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686969</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686969</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686969</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Crypto Mining Is “Incredible Opportunity” for the U.S., Miami's Mayor Says"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All economic goods experience production pressures when their replacement costs are lower than their market prices.  When the marginal production costs of a money is effectively 0 and the market price for new money is >0 (Seigniorage), the long term supply will tend towards infinity.  Hence money systems have developed with competitive Seigniorage; e.g. producing marginally more money is in direct competition acquiring the money from a private owner (bitcoin).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Sep 2021 21:45:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28687907</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28687907</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28687907</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the discussion around prices/exposure swapping/speculation I wanted to occur.<p>If someone has the ability to buy yes exposure at 1 cent, subsequently kill me, and then collect 100 cents that's pretty high pay out odds.  The potential hitman has 99 cents of margin to use to kill me and still be profitable.<p>If the hitman buys at 99 cents, he looses the majority of the bet if he doesn't kill me.  The person who took the other side has significant margins to protect me (from their prospective they bought no at 1 cent).<p>at 50 cents we both loose or gain the same amount of money.<p>I think I'd be more concerned for my safety in case A,B than in case C.<p>The other dimension of derivatives is how much "Open Interest" (OI) -- or the quantity of contracts/exposure -- that exists for a contract.  I think I'd be concerned for my safety if there was any appreciable "yes" OI for the contract that wasn't me.  So my strategy would be to buy up all "yes" contracts -- e.g. the people who want exposure to me dying or believe I will die -- so no one has an incentive to kill me.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Sep 2021 16:21:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567326</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567326</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28567326</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The available price is 99 cents</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2021 17:42:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28542089</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28542089</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28542089</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Prediction markets would influence the processes they're supposed to be impartially observing.<p>Who said anything about impartiality (/cordially a strawman)?<p>Changing behaviors is a feature not a bug.  Your health insurance writer (who's bought "No optimalsolver will not get sick") loses money if you do in fact get sick.  Your fire insurance writer has an incentive to provide you free fire inspections because it reduces their payouts.  A farmer plants a lucrative but fragile crop because a meteorologist can better price weather risks than they can.<p>Swapping exposure across space and time is a productive act.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2021 17:03:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541600</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541600</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541600</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A more accurate phrase is "Event Derivative"<p>A derivative (a contract which is representative of some good, right, entitlement) based on the outcome of an event occurring or not.<p>Event derivatives are all around us. You buying fire insurance grants you the right to sell, to an insurance writer, a smoldering pile of wood (worth $2) at a price of say 30% of the unburned value of your home (similar to an OTM put option).  An accidental-death insurance contract being worth a negligible amount until the subjects death.<p>What people often get wrong about EDs is<p>1. Whether or not they accurately predict events: they don't; they reflect the price, or odds, at which a market is willing to swap exposure.  e.g. One pays a insurance costs because it's more profitable to swap risk than deal with exposure.<p>2. Confusion around incentives: Yes, each party swapping exposure will change their behavior -- which is a feature, not a bug.  A company buying fire insurance can now enter into commerce otherwise prohibitive unlocked by swapping fire risk with an insurance writing company who has incentives to prevent a fire risk -- and do so at scale, coordinating multiple parties.<p>3. Lack of information about unfettered demand for the products.  People claim there's no demand for EDs but neglect to take into account regulations: prevent people from purchasing them freely, political manipulation of prices when buyers are unhappy with the market price for risk, regulatory capture creating anticompetative producer protections, observe that because because of bans the inferior counts some EDs have been forced into are insufficient.<p>The global policy failure of covid has been around risk pricing, risk-exposure swapping, and effective, at-scale incentive coordination.<p>An exercise: An assassination market opens for the price of your head.  In which case(s) should you be most concerned for your life:<p>[A] Exposure available at .99 on the 1<p>[B] Exposure available at .01 on the 1<p>[C] Exposure available at .5 on the 1<p>@HarryDCrane on Twitter is an applied researcher in this area, read him if you're interested in more -- I know I have.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:56:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541519</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541519</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28541519</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Who Is Being Monitored?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>Now you know what it is like to be a black person<p>What makes you think this person isn't black?<p>Maybe the first step we can take to ensuring all people are treated with dignity and respect is to not assume Group X is that group other there, an other. Maybe we can instead assume Group X is everywhere.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Aug 2021 16:48:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158569</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158569</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158569</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Feedgnuplot – plotting standard input in the shell"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>ttyplot is a handy tool to plot ongoing, time series data from STDIN.<p><a href="https://github.com/tenox7/ttyplot" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tenox7/ttyplot</a><p><pre><code>   ping 8.8.8.8 | sed -u 's/^.*time=//g; s/ ms//g' | ttyplot 
</code></pre>
Examples:
<a href="https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2018/10/14/ttyplot-a-real-time-plotting-utility-for-the-terminal/" rel="nofollow">https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2018/10/14/ttyplot-a-real...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2021 13:11:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27893265</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27893265</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27893265</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Cellphone radiation is harmful, but few want to believe it: researcher"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Let's think of cancers as biological errors in the growth instructions for cells.  ITT, people are pointing out that ionizing radiation can cause genetic perturbations to cause cancers.  Let think of that as a bit-flip in the genetic code.  Then commenters posit that "if non-ionizing radiation isn't strong enough to cause genetic perturbations, it can't be responsible for sources of cancer".  Biological systems respond to environmental stressors by trying to resist them and regenerate.  Each regeneration genetic code is copied.  Each copy has some probability of an error in it.  Let's call this genetic bit rot.  So it seems plausible that if non-ionizing radiation induces elevated genetic regeneration, it could cause an increase in genetic degeneracy such as cancers etc.<p>Also stressors are does dependent, e.g. despite earth's atmosphere being 78% by volume Nitrogen: the marginal effect on your health of marginally more nitrogen isn't stable/linear.  I wouldn't recommend you increase it so much, so to some degree we need to discount opinions that "we exist in a EM/RF soup ergo an iota more isn't hazardous).<p>Let's also not confuse the ensemble and individual components. As RF electronics, protocols improveve, so does the minimum necessary energy.  That is "the minimum necessary energy for 5G radios" <= "the minimum necessary energy 4G" isn't the comparison we should be making.  What we should be assessing is going from effectsOf(2G,3G,4G) < Safelevels to effectsOf(2G,3G,4G,*5G*) < Safelevels.  e.g. adding another layer of EM energy<p>I have no idea if the health assertions in this article are true or not but rather than unjustifiably upgrade an opinion of "I don't see how that could be the case" to "that *can't* be the case" I'll stick with the skeptics response of "I don't know".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Jul 2021 17:05:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27774848</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27774848</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27774848</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Paxos <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos</a> has existed for more than 30 years.  If it were easy or simple to issue a money with distributed signing, it'd have been done before Bitcoin's PoW<->Difficulty Adjustment<->Fixed Money Issuance novel art was published.<p>Ethereum has been "about to release PoS" for almost 6 years now and all of the initial critiques (By issuing X units of value, you incentivize ~<X units of energy to be expended)
Summarized here:
<a href="https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/" rel="nofollow">https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/</a><p>If the curious reader is interested in reading more about the scope of fraud that the ethereum protocol has fueled read the post here:
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201214170136if_/https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereumfraud/comments/6bgvqv/faq_what_exactly_is_the_fraud_in_ethereum/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20201214170136if_/https://www.re...</a><p>Why link to the archive.org copy and not the original? Ethereum people got mod access to the subreddit and deleted everything pointing out the fraud.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 May 2021 22:57:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27202347</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27202347</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27202347</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Ethereum Fork Fails on OpenEthereum"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Developers have no ability to coerce what software bitcoin users run -- that's the entire point of bitcoin.  If a competing developer fails to gain user adoption, it's on them that they haven't convinced users to switch consensus rules.  It makes for a convincing inflammatory, but false story, for detractors or grifters though (see the myriad of Bitcoin clones: "Bitcoin" KYC, "Bitcoin" Diamond, "Bitcoin" Cash etc etc)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2021 16:54:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26823044</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26823044</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26823044</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Bitcoin hits new all-time high above $63,000 ahead of Coinbase debut"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When a producer's margins increases, it doesn't mandate that their costs / waste increases.  When margins increase, it allows, but doesn't mandate, production to be expanded -- either by new entrants or existing producers.  In Bitcoin's case, the market demands anti-fraud commitments (in the form of unforgable SHA hashes) to secure the network.  The increase in margins available to bitcoin block producers means that they could increase hash production.  This means bitcoin's money database that doesn't use war or violence to protect it, is even more secure against those who would interfere with it -- say eco-fascists who think politicized violence against block producers achieves some greater good.<p>Producers may source their input goods (equipment, energy) from any source they wish ("we only sell goods made with clean energy or From Our Area").  A kWh sourced from a hydroelectric plant has the same ecological cost be it consumed by a bitcoin block producer or if that kWh is used to charge a van that's used to drive people around a town all day to pick up paper with the faces of dead people on it so it can be counted and update a centralized database.<p>Luckily a freed market exists where we can price if the money maintained by freed people performs better than the Banking<->Authoritarian Oligopolies.<p>If you care about climate change, realize the infinite and perpetual money printing is destroying the earth by mandating perpetual "growth", and fiat money and their investment derivatives fuel that ecological destruction.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2021 23:25:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26800887</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26800887</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26800887</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "New study detects lottery-like behavior in cryptocurrency markets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I find this post very confusing.<p>>I've read both the Bitcoin and Ethereum whitepaper and there's nothing about grievances of traditional governments usage of printing of their currencies<p>and<p>>[The desire to be a part of a "new elite"] is why the most popular currencies have a fixed supply. That way, if they're popular earlier adopters get to be a part of the elite.<p>Technical papers tend to focus on their contribution to knowledge.  In Bitcoin's case it's a distributed systems paper that shows a globally consistent database is possible in an adversarial network with no central coordinator, if finality properties are allowed to be probibalistic in the short term.  Though an cryptography author may feel passionately about Bill of Rights, 4th Amendment protections, they needn't say it in a paper they write about a cryptographic primative.<p>and<p>If we are to assume bitcoin is a "popular currency" and want to read the opinions of early thinkers rather than straw-man them:<p><pre><code>    I also do think that there is potential value in a form of unforgeable token whose production rate is predictable and can't be influenced by corrupt parties. This would be more analogous to gold than to fiat currencies. [1]
</code></pre>
To me that doesn't read as advocating for the creation of a new "elite" (whatever that is)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09975.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09...</a><p>>I do see value in a crypto that's pinned at a weighted average of every single currencies' worldwide weight. [People holding these 'weighted average' currencies a]re  not getting rich<p>How is it that these supposed weighted average monies are superior while simultaneously no one in the market place is demanding them while simultaneously the demand for bitcoin is increasing?<p>The exchange ratio, what you're saying is price, cannot be arbitrarily decreed (Thou shall have X weighted exchange ratio with all government monies).  Exchange ratios / prices are the result of many individual agents swaping, exchanging with eachother.  All previous attempts at information/digital monies (see bmoney) failed because of this misunderstanding of how prices arise.<p>>My biggest concern is a fixed-supply currency gives no government the ability to provide stimulus if necessary.<p>How does printing/diluting money create wealth?  If someone wants to work for a money that's costly for them to obtain (via work) and costless for someone else to obtain (money printing) they're free to do so -- the problem is that one will bankrupt themselves doing so relative to someone wants to work for a money that's just as costly for everyone else to obtain.  Those still holding their wealth in fiat monies (euro, dollar, yuan, yen) or fiat-economy derivatives (bonds, fiat-company equities/stocks) are exposed to this bankrupcy potential -- it's the same dynamic as all currency debasements manifest.<p>>every government in world history that's pinned their currency to something that's relatively fixed has had a severe depression with some part of that depression being contributed to said pinning.  It's just not good economics.<p>Governments aren't economies, Whether people can produce more than they consume (a functioning economy) is orthogonal to whether the same people who have the monopoly on violence also are trying to enforce a monetary monopoly as well. If a government fails because it consumes more than it produces, that reflects a failure in the management of said government -- not because someone, somewhere has a money in their posession.  Typically, it's marginally harder for people to produce more than they consume when they're forced to be subject to a cartel/monopoly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2021 22:55:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26667295</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26667295</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26667295</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "India to propose cryptocurrency ban, penalising miners and traders"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do you think the Roman Catholic Church will give up the Geocentric status of the Bible?  Like it or not, political power structures have no ability to impose their preference on rebellious reality.<p>Governments lost the war against information, cryptography, and money.  The most charitable interpretation one can have for tyranny is that if you're going to talk about the tanks in Tienanmen, it's more costly to do it privately.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2021 12:12:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465019</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465019</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26465019</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What's your expectation for how effective that would be?  Let's compare some existing bans, say prohibited cannabis farming:<p>* Large energy use (lights, fans, pumps?)<p>* Very characteristic energy use (high, relatively invariant)<p>* Massive government budgets/surveillance to attack producers<p>* The need to move non negligible amounts of physical goods<p>* Moral campaigns by governments and social groups that it's bad for society<p>And yet the banned-market drug trade revenue is something on the order of 80 billion dollars per year or 220 million a year.<p>Bitcoin miners, currently:<p>* Large energy use (fans, HVAC, ASICs)<p>* Very characteristic energy use (high, relatively invariant)<p>* Mix of jurisdictions banning or allowing it.<p>* Only need about 2G / Shortwave radio worth of bandwidth to produce blocks<p>* Moral campaigns by governments and social groups that it's bad for society<p>Miner revenues need to be on the order of 10-50 million USD per year to sustain themselves. That's almost 10 times less than the failed (relatively global) "war on drugs"<p>Add to it that by defecting from national socialist forms of storing one's wealth, rather than just momentarily indulging in vice, one improves their position, I'd suspect your hypothetical ban won't work that well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2021 16:18:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437361</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437361</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437361</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DINKDINK in "Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Pumping water down hill is more efficient than pumping it sideways"<p>The CoP of a heat pump is dependent on the temperature potential across the heat pump.  Caution to the reader who thinks one could pump heat from frigid external temperatures into their very warm, high temperature house: the very scenario your post suggests they should be used.<p>Heat pumps are great for increasing thermal potentials and moving heat across them (not for sourcing energy).  They're also great for balancing an internal thermal state that is, on-net, in balance (think of a large office building in the morning, one side is being heated by the sun, the other side  is frigid -- heat pumps can balance the internal energy demands instead of simultaneously cooling one part of the building and heating the other)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2021 15:54:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437079</link><dc:creator>DINKDINK</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437079</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26437079</guid></item></channel></rss>