buckie (u/buckie) - Readit News

buckie commented on Vitalik Buterin Proposes New EIP to Tackle Ethereum’s Sky-High Gas Fees cryptonews.com/news/vital... · Posted by u/marcoslozada

buckie · 4 years ago

Does anyone know where the actual latest design for ETH 2.0 sharding is? Whitepaper/repo because w/o sharding you can't scale layer 1, and if you don't scale layer 1, you can't address layer 1 gas costs.

I've always been of the opinion that their sharding effort would fail, but I want to stay well informed. Sharding POS is very hard because the "trilemma" is correct for POS (kadena.io / explorer.chainweb.com being the example that the trilemma is solvable if you stick to POW).

Layer 2/zk-rollups will only help successful dapp devs lower their gas costs (see: DyDx). It doesn't relieve the pressure on layer 1 as other apps/patterns move in until a new equilibrium is reached.

buckie commented on What 3°C of global warming looks like economist.com/films/2021/... · Posted by u/esarbe

lbebber · 4 years ago

There was no snow in São Paulo AFAIK; and snow in the south of Brazil, which did happen, happens more or less yearly.

(just a minor correction, not arguing against your general point)

buckie · 4 years ago

I can't cite that example, I just have a friend whose parents are there tell me a story about how they were saying how pretty the snow flurries were and how he had to inform them about how ominous it was for there to be snow there. It's possible that they were referring to the frost that Sao Paolo got (which is still pretty crazy), and the videos of snow from further south.

buckie commented on What 3°C of global warming looks like economist.com/films/2021/... · Posted by u/esarbe

melling · 4 years ago

A higher temperature than what we want is almost a given.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/climate-...

China is talking 2060 for net zero.

India is talking 2070:

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/01/cop...

The United States is claiming by 2050 but there seems to be no actual political ability to meet that.

buckie · 4 years ago

One of my current concerns is that the demonization of climate scientists over the last 30 years has resulted in models that underestimate the timelines of how bad things get. Not an intentional conspiracy or anything, just a systemic natural response to the pressure of not wanting to be raked across the coals in the media as the "crazy".

As an example, the heat wave in the northwest of the USA and Canada this year was something I remember reading about as a problem to expect ~2050. Ditto for Siberia this year. Ditto for the snow in Sao Paolo.

I hope my concerns are misguided. I general though, short of a deus ex machina, I have no hope for the world doing anything about the climate emergency, even after it's obviously too late and even after the worlds seen a major city burned/wet bulbed/typhooned off the map.

buckie commented on Attorney General orders unregistered crypto lending platforms to exit NY ag.ny.gov/press-release/2... · Posted by u/graeme

purple_ferret · 4 years ago

Serious question: What's so onerous about the NY bitlicense? I find it hard to believe that a company like FTX, which is shelling out cash to name stadiums and make endorsement deals, can't pony up the money to get the license.

buckie · 4 years ago

I looked into it. It is next to impossible to get. It doesn't take a crazy amount of money to get it, but from what I've experienced it looks like it takes a ton of wealth + the right connections + Albany politics. And that was years ago, I assume it's worse now. Moreover, there's no SLA for responding to the applications... so there are likely 500-1000 applications sitting in a box some where in Albany.

Bitlicense isn't a disaster, but it's a huge problem if you're in the space that you really do need to be careful of crossing. Crypto has a meme factory but not a lobbying strategy, and even if it did it's up against two near immovable objects: old school finance lobbying and being an easy target/distraction in the press.

We should just be thankful that Bitlicense wasn't adopted elsewhere and give up on NYC as a hub for this stuff. Until crypto grows beyond finance AND legal combined (legal will lobby with finance if asked) in terms of who makes money in NYC -or- crypto allies itself with another major mover (maybe real estate), don't expect things to ever change for the better.

It's a shame really. NYC would be leading crypto if not for this law. But then again, NYC doesn't care because tech is probably the 5th or 6th largest revenue generator in the city and has few/no generation spanning connections to Albany.

buckie commented on Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses review.chicagobooth.edu/f... · Posted by u/VHRanger

The_Beta · 4 years ago

I keep seeing this argument that companies are responsible for pollution. While yes it's true, why do you think those companies are polluting? It's not because they get up in the morning and say "better go pollute a bit more today!" They are creating products/services for people.

So if it bothers you that much then stop using those products/services. Not possible? Then vote to change laws. Not possible? Revolution

I get that putting the onus on consumers isn't going to fix the problem, but pointing to a factory that pollutes because you buy their products and want their product cheaply is equally inane

buckie · 4 years ago

> but pointing to a factory that pollutes because you buy their products and want their product cheaply is equally inane

Agreed, but I'm not pointing at the factories. Consumers _can't_ lobby congress or control the media narrative. Factories don't lobby congress nor spin a media narrative designed to distract attention from those profiting off dumping the externalities of the business models onto the world.

I'm pointing at the corporations (the sum actions of their boards & C-suites taken as a single entity) that own the factories and reap the rewards. I'm pointing at the people that have effectively "won" capitalism and then took it way too far by changing the law and controlling the narrative to make sure they stay in power no matter the costs.

I hope there's some resolution that doesn't require a revolution, though I suspect we'll just do _nothing_... then it'll be a mega-clusterfuck the likes of which we can barely imagine... and maybe after the first 10M-100M deaths due to famine/heat/fires/storms we may figure out that we need to do something... and it'll be too late and/or that something will be another major war.

But before that western society gets to decide how to handle storms/crop failures/droughts driving the largest human mass-migration EVER (Central America => USA, Africa/Middle East => Europe) during a period when resources are constraining.

buckie commented on Bitcoin mining has driven up energy bills for residents and businesses review.chicagobooth.edu/f... · Posted by u/VHRanger

bamboozled · 4 years ago

I’m paying to subsidise the fossil fuel industry, I care more about that, I’m just not outages about this.

buckie · 4 years ago

Welcome to climate change in the 21st century, where we'll be outraged/distracted by everything but how ~100 companies are responsible for 70% of global emissions[1]. Today we’ll be talking about evil terrorism enabling cryptocurrencies. Tomorrow we’ll be talking about individual choice and SUVs.

[1]:https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

buckie commented on An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks github.com/fresheneesz/bi... · Posted by u/billytetrud

Taek · 5 years ago

Bitcoin's Proof of Work algorithm has linear scaling. Basically 100,000 nodes all trying to build consensus using Nakamoto PoW can do it in O(100,000) messages. The scaling factor on the number of miners is not what is a bottleneck here.

The main bottleneck for cryptocurrencies is that every single node has to validate every single transaction. So your global throughput is effectively limited to what a single node can process.

Technologies like STARKs can improve these bottlenecks without introducing new trust layers or trust assumptions but still carry data availability requirements which once again require every node to have all the data, even if they don't have to actually process all the data.

There are additional techniques you can use to minimize the data availability impact but then you start introducing trust assumptions again.

It's a tricky problem and there's a good reason none of the major chains have adopted a solution, but it's not as dire as your post suggests, nor does your post highlight any of the fundamental issues at play.

buckie · 5 years ago

There is an example of directly scaling PoW that's been in prod for 1.5 years now: https://explorer.chainweb.com/mainnet

Instead of having X PH of PoW difficulty for a single blockchain, you have N parallel blockchains with ~X/N PH difficulty. Same energy needs, N*single chain performance. The coolest bit being that N can increase in an upgrade w/o needing to increase energy consumption, should the network gain traction and need more throughput. It upgraded from 10 to 20 chains last summer.

Other cool bit is that each chain runs a formally verifiable LISP (Pact)... I jokingly refer to Kadena as "a multithreaded LISP machine in the sky".

Disclaimer: I designed the Chainweb consensus algorithm

buckie commented on Using lasers to reduce drag in hypersonic weapons thedrive.com/the-war-zone... · Posted by u/Gaishan

blhack · 5 years ago

What is the reference I'm missing here?

buckie · 5 years ago

Not totally sure, but maybe this book? Fun read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Fifteen_Lives_of_Har...

buckie commented on Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked bbc.com/news/uk-53263310... · Posted by u/bogle

sillysaurusx · 6 years ago

If you wanted to get into the criminal drug trade, how would you start? Is there a guide somewhere I can follow?

$13M in cash is an impressive amount. It makes me wonder: There must be all kinds of operations happening around us daily, yet nobody knows about them. And those operations need members. Where do they come from?

The inner workings of this stuff is fascinating. To be honest, I wish it were possible to go observe the system in action as a spectator. I'd love to see how the packaging is done, the supply lines, the transport logistics...

(I balance this with a deep hatred for cartels. If you trace these questions far enough, it seems to often lead to "the cartels are at the center of it all." And they're responsible for unspeakable miseries.)

To be clear, my question is: how is the knowledge necessary for such operations preserved? I'm a programmer. I learned it from the internet. Where do they learn? And these aren't street dealers. It's an organized, carefully designed, well-oiled machine. How does this machine work? How does it survive the loss of so many members?

buckie · 6 years ago

> These aren't street dealers. It's an organized, carefully designed, well-oiled machine. How does this machine work? How does it survive the loss of so many members?

Narconomics[1] has a pretty good discussion of the economics (including recruiting) of cartels.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Narconomics-How-Run-Drug-Cartel/dp/16...

buckie commented on Proof of Stake or Proof of Work, What's the Difference? dapp.com/article/proof-of... · Posted by u/jungong

buckie · 7 years ago

The problem with Proof of Work is that it is too inefficient and not that it consumes too much energy. If bitcoin could do 100k transactions per second globally, no one would be talking about Proof of Stake. We'd be talking about: how do we make mining green?