Author: Tom Gauld
I begrudge having Antelope Internet when we could have a more inclusive Antler Internet.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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Ah, you mean the Antlernet, home of the Herdiverse.
Funded by DERPA
I wouldn't mess with this particular old god
Where can I find this mount?
"AI" is the new "blockchain".
It's similarly hyped but deep learning has real applications wherever huge amounts of data are involved. The only application to blockchain tech is online crime.
Not really. You can use crypto to make non-criminal transactions too. You sound exactly like EU politicians, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". Are you saying that you don't need privacy with your transactions? If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. And it's the same with crypto.
Theoretically yes. But practically, the whole tech hasn't reached any noteworthy application at the same age as the Android OS.
The tech is garbage because of its inefficiency and blockchain's only selling point, trustlessness, is a lie because you have to trust someone eventually to get your tokens - or your notary substitute not to fuck up the code of your smart contract (lol).
This only works for criminals in countries that don't give a shit if you scam foreigners, like Russia, for example. They know full well who those criminals are though. But that's fine. Blockchain tech never was meant for privacy (how could it with the ledger being public?)
Blockchain tech never was meant for privacy (how could it with the ledger being public?)
Stuff like Monero can hide that. And even bitcoin is better than banks. You don't have to link your identity to a Bitcoin wallet, meanwhile some banks even want a sample of your voice.
Monero is the only crypto that may actually provide the most barebones version of what Bitcoin was originally supposed to be, but it still has the problem of being massively slow inefficient and unscalable, compared to existing fiat currency electronic banking systems.
Crypto is never going to be widely adopted at PoS, by retailers, basically every attempt at doing that has failed, and I remember when that was the main sales pitch for Bitcoin.
Monero might work for hiding some money, illicit transactions, or doing cross border remittances without massive fees... but in general, crypto is 99% completely baseless speculation and scam grifts.
I agree that a lot of cryptocurrencies are scams, but if you're worried about inefficiency, you can use proof of stake crypto, such as Polkadot. It uses as much energy as 5 households iirc. Even if everyone can see transactions, no one can take that money away from you, which banks can easily do.
Proof of Stake only shines compared to Proof of Work. There's no consensus algorithm that isn't blown out of the water by conventional database tech performance-wise and there never will be because of the network character of blockchain tech.
Token-bros (I refuse to give you the term "crypto", it stands for cryptography) ignore this, maybe even rightly so, since the benchmark cannot be conventional tech if you're trying to implement trustlessness (the DB would be controlled by some entity like a bank) but since there is no trustlessness (trust the network, the devs, the exchange for real money, etc), it's a baseless idea.
Proof of Stake only shines compared to Proof of Work. There's no consensus algorithm that isn't blown out of the water by conventional database tech performance-wise and there never will be because of the network character of blockchain tech.
Why do you use Lemmy, which is far less efficient than a centralized system, because of its network character?
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I definitely like having some money that doesn’t rely on the stability of the government
Oh yes, stability, the Bitcoin's siamesse twin.... :D
When things are unstable you diversify. Most currency is pegged to the US dollar’s value and, as we’ve seen with recent US recessions, its value impacts the value of state currencies worldwide.
Does your power grid rely on the government?
single governments collapse all the time, and even ones that don’t occasionally invalidate their currency for other reasons. My particular government does not seem the most stable right now.
If the US government fails, everyone is going down. That's a singularity event. By which I mean we can't usefully prepare for whatever happens next. At best, we can do some prepper shit, but hiding in a prepper hole isn't something that works in the long run, and sure as hell isn't a desirable life.
Cryptocurrency means nothing in this scenario.
Personally I don’t think a successful coup or similar in the US would destroy other major powers, though it would certainly cause another global financial crisis.
It would. In some ways, the 2008 financial crisis hurt the EU more than it hurt the US, even though all the problems originated in the US. By 2010, the US was looking like the best place to put your money.
Indeed, that’s why I said it would probably cause another global financial crisis. I don’t think their governments would collapse just because the US’s did though. Brettin Woods would be dead and would need to be replaced, plus a lot of IMF loans would need to be reformulated
Oh, yes it would. The global economy flows entirely through the US dollar as a reserve currency. If it goes, everything goes. China can't sell anything to Europe, Europe can't buy oil from the Middle East, and the Middle East becomes a power vacuum. Given time, these could be worked out, but not before their governments collapse.
That's why BRICs have been looking to disentangle themselves from the USD, even to the point of floating the idea of their own currency union. That's a terrible idea for other reasons (it'd let China put a noose around the other three), but there's a reason behind it.
Thats true but you didn't answer my question.
Of course I’m not off the grid? Weird question. I do know how to wire a car battery though
The point is that crypto is reliant on you having access to a power source, internet infrastructure, things which will more than likely brown out or collapse if your government collapses.
Can't even attempt to buy or sell things with crypto if the infrastructure goes down.
At least with physical currency of some kind, you can try.
Crypto, stops working when your unstable government's infrastructure goes down.
Yes in global collapse it would be useless—more useless than coins or paper which you can melt and burn. I imagine a political collapse limited to the US where I am to be a bit slower to where phone, internet, electricity, water etc. wouldn’t go off immediately, but even if they did I hope I could make it to the border of canada or mexico who will likely have internet. From there I’d be a refugee, but potentially one with a bit of bartering power.
You summoned the crypto bros.
And the few people still into blockchain will be like "what if we combined both blockchains and neural networks?"...
Actually blockchain is going to change the world.
Any minute now…
We're already in a cyberpunk dystopia, I want arm improvements dammit!
I really hope some rich people lose a ton of money when the hype settles
They wont, it's the normal people who'll lose the rich people money.
:( :(
Regular people will lose a bunch of jobs in the process, as they try to replace workers with AI. Then as the AI inevitably fucks up, the companies that fix this will start to fail, and no longer be in a position to hire new human employees to fix the problem. So unemployment will go up, and only the large monopolies or oligarchies will be able to recover. So overall, this is going to suck.
It feels a little dot com boom 2.0
It feels exactly that. (Even down to the reliance on massive purchasing of new hardware.) but the effects will be much more widespread, as it won’t just be geographically in some tech areas, since this will touch a bunch of non-tech jobs.
So, is nvidia the cisco of this cycle?
Yup
Edit: or the Sun Microsystems
Sharing this post I made 5 months ago:
I'm an IT consultant and I had a meeting with AWS yesterday. My manager asked me to give the AWS team an overview of our solution so they could see what they could use for a new program they were pitching our clients. That's all the information I had, so I started the meeting by saying "I'm not sure what you all are proposing, so I'm going to give you a high level but please let me know where you need more details."
After I had finished giving my overview, I tried to get more info out of them about what they were proposing to build. I shit you not, their response was that they wanted to "build an app that allowed the business to run with AI and ML (Machine Learning).”
They didn't say, "we want to solve X and Y problems" or "enable Z functionality." Literally their entire goal was to build something with AI. I'm glad I wasn't on camera or in person, because I literally face-palmed.
Time to "build" a D&D campaign with an LLM as the DM.
If someone poured a shitload of money into it, and had actual humans on quality control and some writing... You could generate a setting with a bunch of NPCs who have generated back stories and connections and shit.
And it would still come out as some of the blandest of bland as for as game went. But hey, a bad game is better than no game right?
Ah. Interesting.
Hey, I totally back arm improvements.
You have an arm on your back?
Wild flex butt ok.
Funded.
Aristocratic Ineptitude
Antisocial Interlocutor
Amiable Incompetence
Aesthetic Impersonator
The last one is a cleverly disguised "Datenelch".
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