dhork
@dhork@lemmy.world
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
No, that’s not quite how it works.
Calling the newly minted coins a transaction fee “paid from the pool of unmined coins” isn’t really accurate, as those coins didn’t exist until they were mined. The algorithm carefully controls how many new coins are made.
But miners do not set fees at all. Users set their fee when they make their transactions, and miners pick which transactions they want to attempt to validate. We expect miners will pick the transactions with the highest fee per byte, because they want to increase their reward if they manage to find a block. But they don’t have to, and they may have reasons to pick other transactions.
The whole point of it being trustless is that no party needs to coordinate. Users create transactions, miners validate them.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
Bitcoin was extremely successful at making what it set out to do in the first place: make a fully distributed, peer-to-peer, trustless currency. Anyone who has ever been forced to pay bogus transaction fees ought to be able to appreciate paying for things without needing a bank, or any intermediary at all. It’s like cash you can e-mail.
But, most people into crypto now don’t care about this utility, they just want Number Go Up. So they don’t transact with it anymore, they just hold it (or actively trade with it). Which makes the whole ecosystem not useful for anything except feeding itself.
I still think that, in theory, there are areas where cryptocutrency can be used for real innovative purposes. But these will never actually be done, because the people on a position to do those things would rather make quick money selling shit tokens to unsuspecting people.
Do you want to learn how it all works? Feel free to do so, it’s all Open Source. But if your goal is to invest… Well… Read up on it and understand it first. This will help you differentiate the good ideas from the scams. (And there are a lot of scams!)
- Comment on What free to play games can run smoothly on my old laptop? 3 days ago:
Nethack
- Comment on AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone 2 weeks ago:
Reddit was one of the most human places on the Internet, until King Steven the Turd decided that it’s human interactions were a valuable resource that he could sell.
Now, it’s all just bots talking to bots to learn how to sound human.
- Comment on If the US was partitioned, what new states would you want to appear? 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t make the graphic, I just stole/hotlinked it. I am very familiar with PA, although it’s main redeeming quality is that it’s not New Jersey.
- Comment on If the US was partitioned, what new states would you want to appear? 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Why does no one in the bible have a last name? 2 weeks ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot
Judas’s epithet “Iscariot” (Ὶσκάριωθ or Ὶσκαριώτης), which distinguishes him from the other people named “Judas” in the gospels, is usually thought to be a Greek rendering of the Hebrew phrase איש־קריות, (Κ-Qrîyôt), meaning “the man from Kerioth”.[17][9][18][19] This interpretation is supported by the statement in the Gospel of John 6:71 that Judas was “the son of Simon Iscariot”.[9] Nonetheless, this interpretation of the name is not fully accepted by all scholars.[17][9] One of the most popular alternative explanations holds that “Iscariot” (ܣܟܪܝܘܛܐ, ‘Skaryota’ in Syriac Aramaic, per the Peshitta text) may be a corruption of the Latin word sicarius, meaning “dagger man”,[17][9][20][21] which referred to a member of the Sicarii (סיקריים in Aramaic), a group of Jewish rebels who were known for assassinating people in crowds using long knives hidden under their cloaks.[17][9] This interpretation is problematic, however, because there is nothing in the gospels to associate Judas with the Sicarii,[9] and there is no evidence that the cadre existed during the 30s AD when Judas was alive.[22][9]
A possibility advanced by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg is that “Iscariot” means “the liar” or “the false one”, from the Hebrew איש-שקרים. C. C. Torrey suggests instead the Aramaic form שְׁקַרְיָא or אִשְׁקַרְיָא, with the same meaning.[23][24] Stanford rejects this, arguing that the gospel writers follow Judas’s name with the statement that he betrayed Jesus, so it would be redundant for them to call him “the false one” before immediately stating that he was a traitor.[9] Some have proposed that the word derives from an Aramaic word meaning “red color”, from the root סקר.[25] Another hypothesis holds that the word derives from one of the Aramaic roots סכר or סגר. This would mean “to deliver”, based on the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 19:4 (a theory advanced by J. Alfred Morin).[24] The epithet could also be associated with the manner of Judas’s death, hanging. This would mean Iscariot derives from a kind of Greek-Aramaic hybrid: אִסְכַּרְיוּתָא, Iskarioutha, meaning “chokiness” or “constriction”. This might indicate that the epithet was applied posthumously by the remaining disciples, but Joan E. Taylor has argued that it was a descriptive name given to Judas by Jesus, since other disciples such as Simon Peter/Cephas (Kephas “rock”) were also given such names.[24]
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Move Zig, for great justice
- Comment on Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn 3 weeks ago:
We’ll all have to go back to having sex with your wife
- Comment on What is the difference between a managed switch and an unmanaged switch? 4 weeks ago:
Unmanaged switches are extremely dumb. They do simple things, and do them well.
Managed switches have lots of other shiny features, which is why they are more expensive. They also have to be configured to enable those features, which means you have to know how to drive them
- Comment on Microsoft Open Sources Zork I, II And III 4 weeks ago:
It’s a maze of twisty passages that gets there…
Infocom was bought by Activision, which later got merged into Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft later bought.
- Comment on How One Uncaught Rust Exception Took Out Cloudflare 4 weeks ago:
Just because you’re writing in a shiny new language that never misses an opportunity to crow about how memory safe it is, doesn’t mean that you can skip due diligence on input validation, checking every return value and writing exception handlers for even the most unlikely of situations.
Lol
- Comment on Why does American media (and to an extent the American public) seem to only focus on one issue at a time? 4 weeks ago:
I think you are confusing what the purpose of media is. You think the media exists to keep the public informed. When, in fact, the corporate media in the US exists to sell ad space. You are not the customer, you are the product. Just like a chicken farm doesn’t exist for the benefit of the chickens.
So, as such, the job of the media (especially TV media) is to grab your attention so thoroughly that you stay for the ads. This creates a fine line between reporting on hyped-up scandals and ignoring larger systemic faults that might make viewers themselves feel targeted. It means that once a particular narrative is seen to grab attention, everyone runs with it. However, that narrative can’t go too far in turning off people on one side of the issue unless the “news” outlet aims to only cater to the other side.
This also, to some extent, explains the same washing of the President that is currently going on. This President is a thin-skinned crybaby, and will whine about any little thing. And his supporters follow his every word like a new Messiah. News outlets who want to cultivate a broad viewership base (to sell them ads, of course) can only go so far with certain storylines before his followers change the channel. (Of course, the joke is on these news outlets. No matter how they try to comply in advance, the fascists will come for them eventually…)
- Comment on Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI, plans to fully abandon crypto mining by 2027 as miners convert to AI en masse — Bitfarm to leverage 341 megawatt capacity for AI following $46 million Q3 loss 5 weeks ago:
If I read the article property, the real asset is the rackspace and power they are already leasing. They would tear out the existing Bitcoin mining infrastructure and replace it with AI servers.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
It’s even dumber, because it’s not about the budget, it’s about the allocation of funds to certain departments and the authorization to spend that money, which comes after the budget. Some other countries separate budgets and appropriations like this, but those other countries put in those safeguards you mention, because they want government agencies to function even if the politicians are having a snit.
In the US, thanks to “small-government” Republicans, we make it extremely difficult to spend any money without explicit authorization. And since we also have no concept of a no-confidence vote, politicians ca basically hold government funding hostage if they want. The politicians that are doing this right now know they won’t have to face another election until next November at the earliest. (Senators serve six year terms, and it’s telling that all of the Democrats who cotes for cloture on this bill are either retiring or not up for election next year…)
- Comment on Whatever happened to pickup artists? Did they evolve into alpha males or ascend to a higher plane? 1 month ago:
My quick take is that all that stuff mattered when people had to go out to find other people: to parties, bars, concerts, and other public places. They had to actively attract people to initiate a conversation. Now all those third places are dying, and most couples meet online, which means they have done all the superficial selection stuff already, which changes the game.
- Comment on THE FEDIVERSE IS TOO INFECTED WITH REDDITISM!! 1 month ago:
YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT YOUR CAPS LOCK KEY IS STUCK
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Plot twist: this is just corporate shilling, too, trying to convince us it’s only 15%…
- Comment on How are computer chips designed? 1 month ago:
Is there like a programming language of some sort where a compiler converts syntax into circuitry layouts?
You are looking for something like System Verilog (Or VHDL).
Both these languages let you describe hardware. They can both go down to the circuit and transistor level, but people won’t write that by hand. Rather, they will write code that is a description of digital hardware (flip-flops and the logic between them), and then let tools synthesize their description down to individual logic cells and simple functions. Often, chip fab houses have “standard cell libraries” that implement the most common logical functions, and the tools stich them together based on the higher level description.
Then there is all the verification that needs to be done, not just verification that the design is doing what it needs to do at all times, but that every individual chip is make correctly. Defects do happen, and you want to find them as early as possible in the process.
Lots and lots of expensive tools and specialized knowledge! A good middle ground are FPGAs. These are special chips with lots of generic logic building blocks, and ways to programmatically make connections between them. You can write the same VHDL or Verilog for FPGAs, butt the tools map the logic to the FPGA vendor’s chip instead.These still require tools and specialized knowledge, but much cheaper than a fully custom chip.
- Comment on Would one run faster without arms? 1 month ago:
It depends on how big your arms are. I bet you can run around with a pistol but not with heavy guns…
- Comment on Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together 1 month ago:
There are two ways to interpret the question.
If you go with “will the internetworking between independent diverse networks ever go offline”, the answer to that is most definitely “no”. With so many independent entities involved, and so many redundant connections, data will find a way to be routed to where it needs to go. Perhaps a coordinated attack on undersea cables might disconnect continents from each other.
But if you go with “can the commercial Internet that companies use to sell stuff ever go offline”, I think we’ve seen that the answer to that is “yes”. As more and more commerce moves “to the cloud” I think people are ignorant about how concentrates computing in a few distinct geographical areas and companies. Yes, I am aware that those companies are very good at 24/7 operation and site reliability. Until they fire so many people that they aren’t reliable anymore.
- Comment on Are there really no stupid questions? 1 month ago:
Probably not the very first use of the term, but it’s how I came to learn about it
- Comment on Help figuring out my pressure washer? 1 month ago:
Percussive maintenance
- Comment on "Analog bags" are in. Doomscrolling is out. 1 month ago:
Those are rookie numbers
- Comment on "Analog bags" are in. Doomscrolling is out. 1 month ago:
Take up knitting. I’m serious.
- Comment on What are some good uses the new ballroom can have after the Trump regime is over? 1 month ago:
“Modernizing” being euphemism for planting lots of listening devices for his
friends in Russiapaying customers. - Comment on How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades) 2 months ago:
- Comment on AWS crash causes $2,000 Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright 2 months ago:
“Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it.”
There’s an offline mode, all right. Unplug it!
- Comment on Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting? 2 months ago:
I will be the contrarian in the room and say that you shouldn’t really do anything different – unless you know that you are going to need that money in the next year or two.
Let’s take the S&P 500. Yes, we know there is an AI bubble, and the same 7 tech companies are knee deep in it. But it turns out that bubbles make money, until they don’t. In fact, a good chunk of the growth in the S&P over the past two years has been in those 7 companies.. If you had made this bet 2 years ago, you would be a big loser now.
So what do you do? Don’t panic sell. You can’t time the market. Sell when you need the money for something else. Sell when you have a purpose. But don’t be too upset when the bubble finally bursts, and it all dives 25% (or more!) . That was never real money anyway.
- Comment on Introverts of our era spend their time on their computers, but what did introverts do before? Like when literacy rates were lower (pre-1950s)? Or before the printing press? 2 months ago:
Introverts probably had it much better back then. You couldn’t physically take your work home with you. Your news came once a day, to the front porch, and was not constantly bombarded at your eyeballs. When you were home, you only interacted with your immediate family, unless you had someone physically over to visit. Or if someone called in the telephone, which you could always just not answer.