• alekwithak@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    No one is ever concerned with how much energy is used to feed ads to the entire population of earth 24/7.

    • ULS@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Same with porn. But I’m building a shake-power generator for fleshlites so it should balance out the power it pulls. Saving the earth one jack-off at a time.

      Charging a hybrid car battery only takes 253.4 jerks. Pretty soon we will be expanding our charging service to parking lots across America and Canada! Most of them already have people willing to do it for you already …they were doing it there anyway… Win/win.

      Powerjerk ™, we make perverts work for you!

      Just roll up and say “Hey Jagoff, I need to get to x!” And you’ll promptly be taken care of.*

      *Do not give them drugs to speed up the process. We are serious about our drug-free workplace.

      Edit: steal my idea and I’ll find you

    • LittleBorat2@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      How much does facebook, the banking system Google search need and does it even make sense to compare this against a small country?

    • abuttandahalf@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Instead of actually talking about it you’re lazily using it to deflect criticism of unsustainable cryptocurrencies. Your input was worthless.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yea the rally against block chain tech is stupid as fuck. It consumes nothing in the grand scale…do people not realize a lot of large enterprises have ~200k nodes give or take? Bigger companies can have in the million range. 200k machines is a joke.

      Edit: I can see a lot of people just hate block chain tech without understanding anything tech wise lol

      • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The nodes aren’t the issue. It’s the fact that those nodes have to expend at least the same amount of energy every single time a record is added and the larger the ledger, the more energy is needed. Blockchain is somewhat unique in that regard.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          You do understand what a DB is right? Like there’s millions of them…hell right now typing out this comment has one marking it. And then you’re downloading it to read it… that’s a transaction. Except there are millions of people reading comments constantly on all social media platforms.

          My comment here has more bits in it than a single transaction.

          • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            DBs are not the same as a blockchain. A DB doesn’t have to hash all previous data before it every time the DB is written to. You can read and write to a specific spot in a DB without ever knowing anything else about the DB. With blockchain, inserts have to be successive and they have to reference every previous insert to validate that the entry series is unbroken. On top of that, for things like Bitcoin, every other client also has to validate it since the ledger is shared.

            There’s a reason blockchain is significant. Otherwise, why didn’t stuff like Bitcoin exist prior to it? Databases, in some for or another, have existed for decades. Blockchains are immutable, that’s why. The order of entries matters and validation is a requirement.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              DBs still update their tables every time someone writes to it. And there are millions of DBs being written to every second. It’s absolutely comparable.

              • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                We’re not comparing millions of DBs to a single blockchain. We’re comparing 1 DB to 1 blockchain instance. If you had millions of blockchains, you would use exponentially more energy for the same data vs. a normal database. Updating tables is not the same thing as hashing and validating every prior entry in the table.

          • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            With the electricity used to validate a single crypto transaction you could do thousands or even millions of DB queries.

            Yes, everything uses electricity. That’s like saying that it’s fine if you kill one cow per day to eat its ear and throw the rest because hundreds of them are killed every day in farms.

            Wasting so much electricity in such a non efficient manner so a decentralization cult member can have his wet dream of using non-government money makes no sense.

      • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You don’t even understand blockchain so I’m not sure what your edit is all about. You’re comparing blockchain to a database in your replies as if they’re comparable.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          When it comes to power…it absolutely is comparable…but most of you have no clue how much compute we use daily in terms of power. Acting like the block chain sucks down anywhere near the amount of power we use on even in the corporate world is hilarious…you know a lot of colos have their own sub stations right?

          • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            The only person here who doesn’t know what they’re talking about is you. If you took a standard DB (MySQL or Postgres, for example) and took that same information and stored it on a blockchain instead, you’d use far more energy on the blockchain and the issue would only get exponentially worse as the chain got bigger. Normal DBs don’t need to hash new entries or validate them against previous entries that are also hashed.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Yes because there are millions and millions of block chains…lol don’t fool yourself into knowing what your talking about.

              And yes DBs are only one DB no one ever has HA stacks or redundancy built in…lol

              • Zoolander@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Are you dense, man? No one said that. They’re saying that one blockchain would take several hundred DBs to equal its energy use. You’re wrong and doubling down for some reason and it’s just making you look silly.

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  I said that genius…go check my posts…the fuck you arguing about? I literally said that the amount of DBs we have make the miniscule amount of large block chains out there look like nothing. Then you show up and say one DB isn’t comparable to one large fucking blockchain…no shit.

      • somerefriedbeans@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, people tend hate what they don’t understand. Especially when most people think think every blockchain performs exactly like bitcoin (which is proof of work). Bitcoin is slow and power hungry and would never actually be usable by the masses for everyday transactions. But it was the first and will likely be a “digital gold” for a long time

        But it’s not the only one and in time everyone will be using blockchain technology. It’s so much more convenient and useful than most realize. The Solana blockchain has secured a big partnership with Visa that can be read up on if anyone is interested.

  • Pohl@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The real charlatans were the “the technology has promise” people. No, the technology was dumb.

  • cygon@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    …and, hear me out, that will be perfect for keeping messages untraceable by the government. Every single of those 200,000 computers will have full copies of all the messages ever transmitted, unencrypted, but they’ll never be able to tell who wrote them and who they were for.

    • helo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      privacy or secrecy from the government isn’t a goal of Bitcoin - the protocol doesn’t even use encryption.

      the goal is protection from (government or other) control

    • Clent@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      No one who understands bitcoin ever thought it was untraceable.

      In the early days it was really common to place messages in the chain.

      There are literal marriage proposals among these message.

    • Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’m still 90% convinced it was either invented by the CIA or the NSA for “reasons”. The US military invented the dark web and they even claim to have invented it, so it’s not a far stretch that another US gov. agency invented Bitcoin.

  • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Or, you could just pick one computer, have it do the work and punish it by taking its money if it screws up (ETH).

    But yeah you’re not wrong about minable coins.

  • mommykink@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Crypto =/= blockchain.

    If you can’t see the utility of blockchain with regards to things like actual, verifiable digital ownership, then I don’t know what to tell you.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I want to see what you mean in practical terms, because the only other example that I know besides questionable crypto currencies is NFTs and that was an epic lesson on what not to do. 😅

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        No, NFTs do have good uses, but things like image NFTs are just a misappropriation, like SPAM is to email.

        One use case, is clear, independently verifiable ownership of non-tangible things, like Intellectual Property rights. Movie rights for a book adaptation for instance moving between companies in IP sales and mergers/acquisitions.

        • Robin@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          IP rights is not a problem that needs solving. In fact, the existing legal system has ways of punishing copyright violations whereas the Blockchain does not.

          Supply chain validation is also an example of the block chain “in action”. But the people that are entering the data on the Blockchain are the same people that were typing it in an email yesterday.

          I used to be a fan of the technology as well but so far it hasn’t show itself to be useful. A solution in search of a problem.

        • Metz@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          No, NFTs do have good uses

          I hear that now since 12 Years. Its not going to happen.

        • fishos@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          And it’s ALWAYS the same problem. You can have all the lists you want. A central authority has to recognize and enforce that list. At which point, the structure of your list is completely irrelevant. It could be ANY list. What matters is that it’s chosen to be enforced. And currently, most power structures are happy with plain old databases. Or pen and paper.

        • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I don’t know the value in a decentralized IP rights system. If the key holder gets phished, you can lose your rights to a TV series you’ve been working on. (Like Seth Greene)

          He wouldn’t have lost it and had to pay back the ransom in a traditional contract. Having a contract centralized and enforced by the legal system has many perks and I can’t ever see how a decentralized rights platform can enforce itself.

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        There are other uses. Like making a system that is interconnected and resistant to hacking. For example an interconnected traffic light system that can prioritize transit/emergency vehicles could be managed by a block chain to ensure the system stays in sync with itself for traffic flow/prioirty while being resistant to hacking or malicious activity.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          How does adding more computers, more points of failure, make infrastructure less prone to exploitation?

          • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Because it’s a trustless system. In order to override the system you have to take over 50% of the nodes, and in large enough systems it’s infeasible to get that much compute power. This means that no one person or organization can actually control the destiny of the system, only the consensus can.

            I can’t believe that here, in the fediverse of all places, we need to have a discussion about the benefits of having a system that corporations can’t control.

            • Zron@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Who controls the streetlight blockchain in your idea? You think the government is going to responsibly manage a system that is large enough to be impractical to alter? My local government is barely responsibly enough to manage basic utility maintenance, we’ve had 3 water main bursts in a month and it hasn’t even been below freezing that whole time.

              I can’t believe a human being living in the world doesn’t see that any implementation of a secure blockchain requires massive funding for infrastructure. That money comes from 1 of 2 places, illegal enterprises that maintain control for security and manipulation, and legal corporations that will maintain control for financial security and manipulation. Modern governments don’t run projects like this anymore, they contract them out to corporations.

              Keep in mind that the only practical use of blockchain that anyone has found so far, has been as a currency that requires no ID. The most famous use of these currencies was by John Mccaffee, who used crypto currencies to help him evade authorities for nearly a decade. So I don’t have much faith in a technology that has only shown a benefit to criminals with so much money that cash becomes impractical. Nor do I have to remind you that wealthy private individuals have been able to manipulate crypto markets with hilarious ease, like how Musk pumped and dumped Doge Coin years ago with a single tweet and most likely made millions in private, untraceable money.

              Just because something sounds cool on paper, and makes it seem like it skirts governments and corporations, doesn’t mean it works in practice. Large entities inherently have more resources, and are primed to steal new technologies for their own use, especially when implementing that technology requires huge funding for infrastructure.

              • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Yeah I realize now I responded to a thread about traffic lights instead of systems in general. Obviously centralized systems are far superior for that.

        • mangopuncher@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          This is a classic solution in search of a problem. The problem with stop lights isn’t that corporations control them, the problem with stop lights is that the general population thinks that cars are the only way to get around and demand that city officials optimize street and roads for cars. Adding a bunch of crazy verification steps will not solve this problem.

          This is another social problem that technology just can’t solve.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      How about first we see a version that isn’t a scam? We’ve seen plenty of scam versions so far.

    • themaninblack@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      IMO, blockchain technology is good for one use case: illegal transactions.

      I think all else can be achieved more efficiently by using a trusted third party write-only database, such as the ones available on AWS, and you’d also have the benefit of being able to go to court to seek relief. Some blockchain markets are basically reinventing banking systems and preexisting financial law - systems that have been built over centuries and have quite a bit of knowledge baked in.

      I do like the shift to proof of stake from proof of work, but this tech is silly to me.

      • FreeFacts@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I know of one use case that seems viable, there is a digital housing market service in my country (called Dias). It uses blockchain to verify transactions related to selling and buying houses. That includes proof of sales, ownership, bank transaction status etc. The blockchain is operated by all the major banks. Their incentive is that it increases the security of the transactions thanks to the immutable digital trail, and also the fact that no single entity owns the “database” so no entity can alter it, or skim service fees etc from the others.

        • cooltrainer_frank@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          But if you have any conflict with it, you have to get a lawyer involved right? It doesn’t seem like it provides value to a real estate transaction, just seems like a use case for block chain

    • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Digital ownership on one (1) blockchain. Not really that great when you put it like that. What makes one Blockchain more authoritative than another? Even in a closed system, if you think the admins of these chains don’t keep a kill switch in their back pocket specifically for their advantage in ownership conflicts then you should probably read about Ethereum Classic. Even if they don’t want to hard fork, if a chain is controlled entirely by a company, then they can edit it however they want regardless since it’s not really decentralized. The idea that Blockchains will empower the customer with digital ownership is silly to me.

    • Pifpafpouf@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      A blockchain is only as secure as the amount of work (= processing power) that goes into it. Anyone with 51% of the processing power invested in a blockchain can attack it and essentially steal from other people. For cryptocurrencies it’s a problem that solves itself, because every person that possesses some of the cryptocurrency is incentivized to mine to keep it secure (and to earn some at the same time). The more your cryptocurrency is valuable, the more people will want to mine it and the more secure it will be.

      For anything other than cryptocurrencies, you can’t incentivize a huge number of people to commit computing power to secure your blockchain. So you have to protect it some other way, for example only allowing you and some trusted people to write on it. But then it doesn’t really need to be a blockchain anymore, just a write-only database (which will perform better and occupy less space).

      If it requires no work to generate a block at the end of your blockchain, any attacker can generate malicious ones.

  • Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Then some massive org like the NSA creates/captures 51% of the nodes and takes everyone’s money overnight.

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        10 months ago

        Ignoring the fact they definitely have the resources to sustain it, how many people will continue to run a node after losing everything to such an attack? How will anyone reclaim real world value if they exchange the coins for something else?

        • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Coin holders would only lose everything for as long as the attack occurred. The validated chain would still correctly record their claims.

          The people receiving the fake coins transfered during the attack are the ones that will be pissed. Any goods or services exchanged during that attack period may not be compensated.

  • Landmammals@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It doesn’t require that much computing power, that’s just a variable that gets set.

    If the difficulty were set lower, one average computer could easily handle it.

  • Rooter@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Wow, I thought I was back on reddit with the tech fear mongering.

    A single Ethereum transaction now uses only 0.02 kWh of electrical energy and has a carbon footprint of 0.01 kgCO2, which is much lower than the average values for a debit transaction or PayPal.

  • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I love how one man created arguably the most complex puzzle in the history of mankind and people shit on it just because it’s literally hard to solve (aka “uses energy”) and the solutions have value.

  • Dragon@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    For anyone who’s interested, Holochain solves this problem while fulfilling the decentralization promises of Blockchain.