I believe that is because when you finance a house you're financing the land+house combination, with the land making up the majority of value in most urban areas - when you finance a mobile home you are only financing the home, which depreciates (unlike the land component) - hence its a higher risk loan and therefore more expensive to finance.
>>with the land making up the majority of value in most urban areas
I would love to see a source where land value makes up the majority of the value in most urban area's
In my case, my home is worth about 2x the land the shits on, and I am for sure in a urban area. Most of my state is the same
Now maybe for a ultra dense urban area's where single family home would/should be replaced with high density building that would be the case but for the common subdivision in suburbia I doubt the land is the majority of the value
even in the source article of this story, the average Home Price was $370,000 with land cost being $86,000
When a half-burned shell in Walnut Creek, CA sells for a million dollars, the value is clearly having buildable land located near a strong labor market.
I can play this game to, it does not prove you assertion, provide a data sours that should the majority of urban locations are land value heavy
Random Property in Philadelphia [1]
Assessed Value 2023: 257300 / land: 51460 - Structures: 205840
Assessed Value 2015: 186800 / land: 90300 - structures: 96500
So in Philly land DROPPED in value, Structures increased
In Austin they appear to claim Structures s have not increased in value at all in 10 years (very odd) and the 100% of the increase in the value of the land
I bet if I dig into local tax laws I will find some justifications for both valuations methods (meaning the local taxing authorities are manipulating the values for maximum tax revenue)
Just think a bit deeper about it. If you can get an equivalent sqft house built to similar cost of materials of a similar age and similar condition, why would that house be 1/3rd the price in one spot? The land and the property tax rate is the difference.
I understand that some area have massively increased land prices
That is not the discussion, the claim I was responding to said that the MAJORITY of urban homes the value of the home is made up by the value of the land, not the home
I can see that in some very select regions of the nation, but through not the midwest that for sure should not be the case, and I am suspect that the MAJORITY of the nation is that way
Thus my asking for a SOURCE for the claim that was made as my experience differs
So far all have a gotten was 2 cherry picked anecdotes to prove the claim with no actual data backing it, as such i will simply assume the statement is false
"Urban" is too broad of a term in the US where 80% of the population is defined as urban. Needless to say, Hattiesburg, MS and New York, NY are both defined as "urban" areas but have very different ratios of land value to structure value.
FWIW The Internet's development was funded by DARPA - The U.S.'s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. For better or worse defense/offense has driven significant innovation for humanity, which has created many non-violent related benefits.
Somewhat tangentially related to people being afraid of Racoons carrying rabies, a Racoon risk people should actually be aware of is inhaling a parasite from their feces by mistake (i.e. sweeping/leaf blower, or children playing in a sandbox or yard where racoon does their business)
What would police investigators possibly have to gain from making this up?
It’s not even an outlandish claim. Knowing the technology and the region this force covers it sounds perfectly reasonable to me that a least some thieves are experimenting with this technique.
("Dr. Dedhar and colleagues previously identified a unique compound, known as SLC-0111—currently being evaluated in Phase 1 clinical trials—as a powerful inhibitor of the CAIX enzyme")
"U-104 (SLC-0111) is a potent carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibitor for CA IX and CA XII with Ki values of 45.1 nM and 4.5 nM, respectively. U-104 shows a significant delay in tumor growth in mice model. "
For research use only. We do not sell to patients.
Out of curiosity - you mention that in the 90's there were a number of TV shows featuring prominent black characters but there isn't anymore. Why did you decide the solution to that problem was to create a black-focused distribution platform, instead of production company focused on creating new shows of similar quality to those in the 90's - has something changed about the market that would prevent shows like those that were successful in the 1990's from being successful today?
That's a great point. I think both things probably need to be done. We took the distribution route, because ultimately we believe it's the direct relationship with the consumer that will allow for this to work. As a production company, you're a step away from the end-user, so you're at the mercy of a distribution company that has more than just the black audience to worry about. But if a company is solely focused on a single niche, like so many tech companies out there, the economics for super-serving that niche are a lot better.
Generally, your points about capital and valuations are true. Of course, I could argue Netflix is way more capital intensive than any production company. And then, with Hello Sunshine and others, we're seeing production companies get Venture scale exits. So while I hear your point, those honestly weren't factors for us. It was more so about owning the relationship with the end-user.
Hmm, interesting comment: it could mean either of two opposite things, but that makes it self-contradictory!
Just for clarity, when YC funds a company, the goal is not to have it get acquired. It's to have it go public. Acquisition interrupts that, so it's a suboptimal outcome. That said, YC supports what founders want to do.
How many YC companies ended up going public out of the total? And how large is that total? What is the expected timeframe from launch to IPO? How many companies still outside of that window? Those would be interesting stats to have.
Sorry, I don't know the answers—but few so far (fewer than 10 I think). More in the last couple years though. It takes a long time. I'll see if I can convince someone who knows more than I do to comment here.
I think what he's suggesting is that lack of distribution may be contributing to / causing the lack of quality black programming. By setting up a distribution company, they can now create a channel for quality work that exists but isn't currently being distributed.
I think we're already well past the point of return on that. It's not the 90s anymore where everyone watches the same 2 sitcoms or whatever. There's YouTube, Twitch, and like a dozen different streaming services out there. People don't all watch the same stuff anymore.
I assume you are just as critical of things like Crunchyroll?
Crunchyroll doesn't market itself as being by Asians, for Asians, and about Asians. It focuses on a specific genre of television that just happens to originate from Asia.
The reaction by the admins and community to this blatantly racist and discriminatory product have me sickened to my core. Any comment pointing out the negative impacts of profiting off of our increasing racial divisions has been suppressed.
Nothing is stopping you from consuming content that centers Black people. There has been an absolute renesance in the last few years of stories that focus on black lives in ways that haven't really been told in pop culture before, especially in TV.
And the best part is these shows are good! They are really fucking good!
Nothing is stopping you from consuming that content and incorporating into that homogeneous base upon which you build your interactions.
Subjectively-- many of the best "black" shows in the 90s were in the Traditional Sitcom category-- Fresh Prince, Martin, Family Matters, Steve Harvey show, etc.. Even though they touched on black issues, 80% of the shows' content was "typical American experience".
Perhaps the niche-ification of streamed content has resulted in Black shows that don't feel relevant to non-black people. And since the majority don't feel it's applicable to them, they lose the algorithm game.
Just a guess, I don't have any real evidence to back this up. But if that's the problem, it seems like it would be solved by this startup.
I can think of a few major factors that impacted the market in the 90s:
1. Fox/WB/UPN. These fledgling networks broadcast a lot of black-oriented content trying to grab a foothold in the market. This in turn spurred ABC/NBC/CBS to do the same to avoid losing market share.
2. Bill Cosby. The success of the Cosby show in the 80s/early 90s instigated a lot of attempts to grab a piece of that market. Cosby had further success with the spin-off show A Different World (which was notable also as being the only TV show at its time to focus on Gen X characters).
Not OP, but yeah the market has clearly changed. Everything we consume today and media in general has been fractured, organized into subcategories, and is now delivered by algorithms.
I my opinion the problem isn't that there is no demand for black-focused media, its that its just become another subcategory of Netflix. And because it may not be as popular on Netflix it doesn't get as much production. Look at what Netflix is producing these days - its mostly lowest common denominator algorithm driven garbage.
Much like Reddit which hits lowest common denominator in all the big subs you have to dig for the quality stuff. And hope it gives you similar stuff, but I’ve found that harder on both Netflix and Reddit the bigger they got. But it’s still possible.
Twitter on the other hand seems to do everything possible to push you away from your niches and selected content, even though the whole idea is to follow people.
Yeah, at various points I've seen promoted categories for black created/focused content pop up on Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc. It's going to be tough for a new service to compete with the substantial existing libraries of those streaming services. They already have the content and the audience, and just have to tweak their recommender to promote it more effectively.
Netflix was a distribution platform before it became a production company as well. If you have a revue stream from existing content then you have the money to make content. Also, if minorities have content that they want to be seen, they'll potentially have a better shot here because of the focus. So from this website's perspective, there might not be a shortage of content to licence right out of the gate, compared to what they could create themselves. Also, it sounds like they know how to make websites.
I would imagine it's got a lot to do with domain knowledge. Setting up a streaming service is a very different proposition from setting up a production company. These are presumably tech people, not TV people. Besides, I bet setting up a production company is a few orders of magnitude more expensive than this.
"For one thing, animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which can weigh a lot more than we do—a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans.
Moreover, FDA reviews drugs not just for safety and effectiveness of the active ingredients, but also for the inactive ingredients. Many inactive ingredients found in animal products aren’t evaluated for use in people. Or they are included in much greater quantity than those used in people. In some cases, we don’t know how those inactive ingredients will affect how ivermectin is absorbed in the human body."
The use of ivermectin in humans to treat parasites won a Nobel Prize.
Quoting from the Wikipedia page:
"Half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Campbell and Ōmura for discovering avermectin, "the derivatives of which have radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, as well as showing efficacy against an expanding number of other parasitic diseases"
"There seems to be a growing interest in a drug called ivermectin to treat humans with COVID-19. Ivermectin is often used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals.
The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses."
Hydroperoxyl (the common name for hydrogen dioxide) should just break down into water and oxygen gas as soon as it encounters H+ ions (e.g. when it touches liquid water), no? Is there some particular reason you think the dangers are being repressed? If your answer is something to do with "free radicals" my understanding is that most of those come from metabolic processes rather than things you eat.
Thanks for correcting me, meant to say dihydrogen monoxide, aka water ;)
My point being that you can over-dose on almost any compound at high enough doses. So instead of driving the conversation underground and letting patients self-medicate, we should empower doctors with proper information rather than painting Ivermectin as a conspiracy theory drug
"If you have a prescription for ivermectin for an FDA-approved use, get it from a legitimate source and take it exactly as prescribed. Never use medications intended for animals on yourself. Ivermectin preparations for animals are very different from those approved for humans."
So, 23 years instead of 24? Or 3.5 years instead of 3? Your correction without conclusion doesn’t seem helpful in deciding which calculation is least wrong.
The math is $1,000,000 is the average price of a house in Toronto[1]. You usually need 20% down for a house at $1M or more[2]. Therefore you need $200,000 downpayment, which at $11K / year is about 18 years, assuming no compounding (which at least today is basically the case currently in Canada with interest rates where they are).
It should be noted though that it is pretty rare to reach $175K salary in the GTA before turning 30 (Average household income in Toronto is sub $100K[3]). Therefore for the majority of people it will take more than 18 years to build up that down-payment, which could be where the number in the article came from.
Actually if you really want to save 60k with a net annual salary of 111k, you could do it in prob 2 years (cancel you Amazon account). Ard 6,500 CAD per month should be enough to live by, shouldn't it.
Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness). It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans.
> the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans
As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
The Buddha taught there are three kinds of dukkha [usually translated as “suffering”]. The first kind is physical and mental pain from the inevitable stresses of life like old age, sickness, and death. The second is the distress we feel as a result of impermanence and change, such as the pain of failing to get what we want and of losing what we hold dear. The third kind of dukkha is a kind of existential suffering, the angst of being human, of living a conditioned existence and being subject to rebirth.
> How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
That's a pretty good indicator of a civilization's state. For an advanced one, the answer to your question would be "it's nowhere near the top worries". All human-made horrors (war, climate change, etc.) would be left far behind.
If we were as smart as we think we are, our biggest problems would be rogue asteroids, solar storms and aggressive aliens, not human geopolitical bullshit, poisoning our water, or destroying our own ecosystem.
True, but also the other way around: A less advanced civilization would have much more trouble with elephants, sea urchins, bacteria, and other natural factors than with humans.
Stepping on a sea urchin is no beuno. I remember one time snorkelling and I was being pulled by a rip tide and I was like no big deal, I can just slowly head a different direction until I started being pulled barely past sea urchins on corals and then I was freaked out. They are dastardly.
By default, nature is an aggressive and competitive environment.
It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute (and even made children's toys in their image)
> It's only after we barricaded ourselves in towers protected by walls that we started to find predatory animals cute
I don't think that's entirely accurate. Dogs were domesticated well over 10k years ago, possibly close to 30k years ago. I see no reason to think that people didn't find puppies cute then as well since the reasons why we think of baby animals cute seems to be related to the same pattern recognition that causes us to recognize those attributes in human infants and think they are cute. The version of animals we find "cute" are all represented with infantile portions. There is something to be said for removal of danger as a prerequisite though (I doubt most people would have been receptive to the teddy bear in the 1920's if problems with bears were still frequent).
What is nature different from the environment? Is nature not the environment? Is it truly aggressive and competitive or does it seek balance and evolution, or maybe it is and does not seek? Does applying those adjectives personify and build emotion into nature where none exists?
Again, question the premise holding in your mind’s hand a momento mori. All those things can and likely will happen. If the key advancement of human civilization was in virtue, would those things be a cause for worry or suffering?
I'm not sure I buy that. There's not any proof that a more advanced civilization exists. Even if we assume that one does exist, why does it follow that they are immune to war, oppression, power struggles etc? The only data point we have suggests otherwise.
Or maybe the aliens are all holding hands in a circle singing kumbayah?
Imagine you are an advanced civ with weapons hardly imaginable to current humans. Anti-Matter bombs, GRB strength energy weapons, etc, who even knows what is possible. With weapons like that even a run of the mill rogue political group, terrorist or whoever could probably trivially destroy an entire planet. It stands to reason that if they are able to continue to exist as some kind of multi-planetary species they have figured out a way to avoid killing themselves.
Nature often seems idyllic, when it has reached a stable equilibrium. But what it really is, is a ruthless and absolute class system, where each species "knows" its place, and has settled in to make the best of its lot.
The disruptions to equilibrium that we witness are almost always man-made. But there have been others, caused by new species, ice ages, asteriods, the Great Oxygenation Event, etc.
Alien civilization might be at equilibrium. Or, if we meet them, they may more likely be in an expansionist phase.
But I think a civilization that harnesses its conflicts - as we try to, with competing businesses, scientists, olitical parties, sporting teams - will have greater long-term success than a destructive, exploutative culture, by definition. It's not that competition is "good", but they we have aggressive aspects seeking dominance, and we are better off shaping them than having tribal warfare, raiding parties, etc which is more our natural state. And something like it is part of the nature of life itself.
As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was dominated by these problems.
I would have thought the opposite would be true, hunter gatherers are generally well fed from a variety of food sources, would have lived in low densities and would have been highly mobile, so in the event one food source become scarce they could move elsewhere, or switch foods. Early agriculturalists would have been stuck in once place reliant on a single, or few, food source/s and therefore vulnerable to failed harvests for a variety of reasons, droughts, natural disasters, theft (of stores, if they are lucky enough to farm food that can be stored) etc.
> "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains"
I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance.
Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wouldn't populations thin out and stabilize accordingly if starvation was such a problem?
[1] - _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ and _Sex at Dawn_
That same book claims that the agricultural revolution was responsible for human specialization. We were able to feed larger families/tribes and develop non-food related skills. Without agriculture, those extra people would've died aka "thin out" as you mentioned.
Agriculture encourages large families since children can help out in the field. Meanwhile with a hunter gatherer lifestyle the amount of food that can be acquired is not limited by labor but rather by the local environment. The effect is that you have lots of people doing backbreaking work every day.
In could, but that's generally not what it means when applied in this way. You don't thin out a a herd (which is where I think that phrase is most often used in English) by spreading it over a larger area, but by removing a percentage of the individuals that make up the herd.
Starving to death together with the rest of your tribe - your parents, your siblings, your friends, your kids - must be mentally excruciating. Famine has been considered one of the worst curses of humanity since the dawn of written records at least.
How happy are we who have never experienced that! How would our ancestors envy us!
Truly if one was to know the excruciating pain of those who have gone before these things of today thought of as worthy of attention would fade to nothingness.
Would our ancestors envy us or be happy for the fruit of their effort? There are setbacks and frustrations about the slow state of progress sometimes for certain. Maybe they would also be sad for the material orientation of many people and the loss of spirituality that gave them much hope and fortitude.
Was it? I wasn’t aware of that? Is this also the case of non-human omnivores? If not, at which point in our evolution did this start to be the case, e.g. during Australopithecus or Homo Erectus? And is it also the case for humans that don’t live in agricultural or industrial societies today (such as tribes deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea)?
One year into a worldwide pandemic affecting every aspect of life and you have a hard time finding examples of really bad things not caused by human? That's some committed misanthropy, I got to give you that.
The virus either originated in a human lab (unlikely) or jumped cross-species in an environment created by humans (exotic animal markets with poor hygiene controls). So...yeah this one is kinda on us.
> maybe we should have been much smarter about preventing or containing it.
That doesn't mean humans were responsible for the pandemic, though. That means humanity might bear responsibility for not as effectively containing the pandemic.
If an asteroid strikes the earth, and causes a mass casualty event that doesn't mean humans caused the asteroid strike (even if we maybe should have invested more in preventing the asteroid strike).
I think it's reasonable to expect more effective human preventative measures, without confusing the disaster for ones caused by human activity.
Is a virus a problem or is it a new challenge for humanity to take on, just as our understanding of molecular biology has become ready to address it? I respect the loss of people just as I respect the loss of all who have gone before, soldiers, explorers, pioneers, even those who did not intend risk but lived unknowingly under risk that existed nonetheless.
It's always important to remember that we live in a thin sheet of self-sustaining complexity in a cold, hostile universe, perhaps unique and if not incredibly rare. The "human" problems are a luxury when our fragile existence seems like little more than an accident.
TBH the perspective that humans will learn to control meteorites is a bit frightening.
Because I would like to believe that this capability will only ever be used to protect the Earth from them, but our history says otherwise. Anything that can be used as a weapon will ... well, at least enter the arsenals, and only fear of devastating retaliation will stop people from actually using it. Or has, so far.
The cause of most problems for any biological creature on earth is external. All animals compete fiercely for survival among the elements, among other creatures, among each other. Survival is the biggest problem for all animals.
Except humans. More humans die each year due to other humans, or due to things other humans have created (for example humans ignoring mask mandates).
Point is, we are the only specie who has become its own worst enemy.
Idk, what am I saying? I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.
Evolutionists like Dawkins pose that most organisms are in fiercest competition with members of their own species. You and I compete for identical resources: mates, jobs etc.
Other species have mostly arranged not to kill one another in these competitions. E.g. vipers & komodo dragons don't bite while wrestling. Walruses get pretty ripped-up, but usually don't die.
Ganging up to kill seems to be mostly a primate thing.
Male lions will kill cubs fathered by another male without remorse. It is not the same as our primate instincts of war, but remarkably close to ethnic cleansing.
> I think we can improve eachother's lives quite a bit if we just kick out the assholes from power.
What other species creates scalable, global solutions to large scale problems? Example (not real, but realistic) - a group of scientists in India create a vaccine that a company in Germany manufactures, so that people in the US can avoid a deadly virus.
Only one I can potentially think of is Fungi, as they appear to have large scale symbiotic relationships, but nothing is comparable to humans.
>How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
Think in simpler terms, like a technology used at work, or a tool used at home; I've been in enough changes in the former that tell me many people believe a new thing will be better than the old thing, even after going through that same process several times.
The introspection needed to understand that people will break the process if they want or need to is hard to come by.
> As opposed to elephants or sea urchins? How can humans not be the cause humanity's biggest problems?
Dinosaurs' biggest problems was asteroids. There are plenty of externalities outside of human control, or that humans are only marginally responsible for (asteroids, gamma ray bursts, volcanic eruptions, famine due to crop diseases, pandemics, etc).
The value is providing the ownership of a digital scarce fixed-supply item that can be transferred and traded.
That's the product. And the market gives it a price.
Also, it has everything to do with monetary policy.
There are 8000+ cryptocurrencies, some (or a lot?) of them are bitcoin clones. Most of them issue millions and billions of those digital items. It's not scarce at all.
There is a difference between short term utilitarian value and long term utilitarian value.
BTC might have no short term utilitarian value, but in the long term the utilitarian value is to create a globalized monetary policy.
1. BTC is speculative because it may not actually achieve the goal of a single globalized monetary policy. Some other crypto might become the defacto denationalized currency instead, or maybe nothing changes.
2. A single globalized monetary policy may not be useful. However, no one really knows. People investing in any crypto seem to believe that a denationalized monetary policy will be better functioning.
Speculation alone doesn't imply no long-term utilitarian value exists.
Great question, but I'll answer a slightly different question.
> If and when we have a globalized monetary policy, how do we run it without burning more energy than entire countries?
1. You could get all entities governing the market / governing the globalized monetary policy to perfectly trust each other. Seems impossible given the Prisoner's Dilemma is exponentially more difficult to solve as the number of actors grows.
2. It is outside my domain of expertise to know how we can make a trust-less ledger efficient to run. The engineers behind ETH and Nano seem to believe it is possible.
However, given 1. is an impossible problem, and every unique entity that governs the globalized monetary policy will be competing with each other for control. They will all compete in an arms race to control as many crypto nodes as possible (i.e. a war of energy production).
It seems like the amount of energy needed will always be larger than most countries use because otherwise any one country can spin up a 51% attack very easily.
This doesn't mean crypto energy consumption will spiral to infinite as the world's super powers compete. Because, the world's super powers already have to worry about "mutually assured destruction" and as such can "trust" each other not to trigger a 51% attack because that would be treated as a global signal to launch nukes[0].
And like nuclear de-armament, there will likely be a push for the super powers to consume less energy while protecting against a 51% attack. There will be some interesting equilibrium. My guess is the equilibrium will probably be around the energy consumption of the p99 country sorted by energy consumption.
[0] I've never thought about this before, but a 51% attack could be an automated signal to launch nukes. I hope no country removes the humans from the launch process.
> Could we do this without burning more energy than entire countries?
Based on my (arguably poor) ability to predict the future the answer seems to be a "No, crypto energy consumption will always be more than most countries".
Other people like the ETH and Nano developers seem to believe the answer is "Yes it is possible to be more efficient with crypto mining". However, I don't know their stance on "Will the energy consumption still be more than most countries?"
Nobody accepts it as payment, because its value is too volatile, speculation-driven, and nobody wants to spend it, because it is deflationary.
And that's not even considering the fact that it can only be transferred at around 6 transactions per second, less than 1/10,000th of the transaction volume of Visa.
> Bitcoin is an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Presuming Satoshi did this out pure altruism, I wouldn't say perfect. However, if Satoshi still has 10% of the Bitcoin supply, then I couldn't agree more. Given the fact that most of us don't know, we're simply projecting whatever believe we have on that particular matter, which definitely votes for "an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws"
Thought question here. What if we hyped up bitcoin to 10X its current value? Wouldn't that mean that per real-world transaction / per unit dollar value it would use 1/10th of its current amount of energy? For example something that would normally cost 0.1 BTC would now cost 0.01 BTC.
The block rewards issued to miners would be worth 10x as much, so more equipment would be pressed into use for mining, until the expenses of mining roughly equal the current value of the block rewards (plus transaction fees, for the nit pickers out there).
10x price increase equals 10x mining expenditure, mostly on energy.
Agree. It would not be easy to know which has wasted more GW-hrs, but my bet would be on Windows. Remembering decades of overnight flying toasters.
As recently as 2012 I was going around the office, before leaving, turning off the monitors left on because Windows did not default to doing that itself. On CRTs it was even worse.
But it is not a competition. Bitcoin and Windows together are clearly much worse than either alone.
Fun and joy in and of themselves are worthy pursuits. That's completely aside from considering video games as an artistic medium that can be used to learn and share about the human experience.
Bitcoin does none of that. At its very very best it's a way to buy hallucinogens on the internet with massive external consequences.
I think understanding bitcoin from a systems point of view is of great value. Although proof of work is problematic, the idea and manifestation of a censorship resisten electronic monetary system is just amazing. Bitcoin is actually working for more than 10 years... There are alternatives to PoW, e.g. ethereum 2.0, let's see if this works and than judge again...
I feel sorry for anyone that expects bitcoin to actually be anonymous. Given that we can use statistics and timing to determine the memory contents and instructions run on different cores in a CPU, anyone that uses a currency that keeps public global transaction log and thinks they can anonymize themselves by just mixing their money in a pool is in for a rude awakening at some point. For any useful amount of usage, my guess is they're just kicking the de-anonymization can down the road a few years.
I haven't, but I'll take a look. My completely green suspicion knowing nothing about it at this point is that it's probably just a step up in an arms race, to which more advanced statistical techniques could be developed and applied to eventually, which means past transactions using old methods are vulnerable to being traced. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though, so I'll take a look.
The only reason satoshi hasn't been found is exactly because he/she/they haven't spent any of those bitcoins.
(Also, the slightest movement in those coins would likely cause a massive drop in the value of bitcoin, as rational people realized a huge cache of previously assumed out of play coins might start being sold and everyone using it as an investment rushed to exit ASAP to avoid beat that).
Yes, you can buy some items online with BTC, but almost no household daily essentials. Show me a grocery store, gas station or pharmacy that accepts crypto. There are plenty of companies selling Crypto payment gateway software, so it’s clearly not a technology limitation.
The reality is there is no consumer demand for crypto as a means to purchase things.
Its an alternative finance system bringing inflation resistant digitally accessible and transferable assets to an unbanked and inflation exposed populace. Many are ignorant of the challenges that face people in contries that don't the most sophisticated financial system on the planet with a local currency that acts as the worlds reserve currency. It takes up way too much power, but I am not going to let this key opportunity to much of the worlds less fortunate, be under appreciated.
At best its an alternative finance system that works around the captured, corrupted, and rent seeking finance systems of the world.
The amount of energy required to rescue a single princess does not increase exponentially over time. In fact it pretty much stays constant. Furthermore, gaming energy expenditures are probably minor compared to the amount spent on Bitcoin these days (last I heard it had an energy footprint equivalent to the Netherlands.)
There are also other cryptocurrencies that don't have the same problem as Bitcoin with being increasingly energy intensive to produce over time.
75twh/year only PC gaming and that was year 2015! And PC gaming is smaller market. Now add the whole industry or creating them and the servers running the online parts. And add consoles. And creating all the hardware, mining minerals for them, transportation.
The industry is growing like crazy as well.
Bitcoin was 122 twh/year I believe.
Both gaming and bitcoin kill the planet and are not necessary until global warming under control.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect the reason people did is that for gaming, energy usage is a cost and for bitcoin energy usage is the point. They are completely different systems. Bitcoin's energy usage expands more and more as Bitcoin gets more valuable and/or energy gets cheaper.
If game consoles/PCs get more efficient, they use less power for the entertainment value delivered to the world. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, the fixed amount of energy gaming uses becomes less of a big deal.
If ASIC miners get more efficient, difficulty and hashrate goes up, and they use the same amount of power for the same amount of security delivered to the blockchain. Or, if renewable tech makes energy cheaper, miners will use more of it.
The "W" in PoW means work but it could equally mean "waste". The whole reason it's secure is that you look at the total hashrate of the network and go "wow, that is so expensive, nobody would ever burn so much energy just to double-spend some bitcoin". No matter how good hardware gets or how freely available energy gets, it must always be incredibly costly to operate the network, because that's the premise its security is built on.
Yeah I'm well aware. Despite not being a fan of bitcoin I'm sure many can claim entertainment value from it as well. Either tech or gambling.
So I guess its a matter of taste and for me they are both useless industries.
Fiat currencies are an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Fractional reserve lending are an almost perfect exploitation of humanities fatal flaws (greed, unwillingness to acknowledge externalities - i.e. selfishness).
Deflationary currency is useless currency. There is a reason that every deflationary period in modern monetary history was immediately followed by a catastrophic depression.
Contrary to the dollar-sign-eyed bitcoin hacks, the purpose of money is to be exchanged for goods and services, not to sit in an account forever while you watch numbers go up.
As a person holding a certain amount of currency, the last thing you want is the govt to print more. That is essentially the govt putting a hand in your pocket and taking away cash by diluting what you already have.
Is land a bad thing to buy because they are not making more of it?
I'm sure you know you can exchange those numbers for other numbers that show up in your bank if you're inclined..
As a person who makes goods/provides services, what you want is for the government to ensure there is enough money for others to buy/hire your good/service.
As a person who wants to buy a house but doesn't have the full purchase price in liquid dollars, the thing you want is for the government to give lenders access to low-cost money so they can then lend it to you at low rates so you can afford the principal+interest on your loan.
As a person with savings to invest, you want to know that the bonds you're buying will be paid back with some interest to balance the risk of higher-yield stocks/bonds.
Sure, you have a valid point. However, a tangential argument can be made that, exactly due to banks lending money to buy houses, houses have essentially been priced out for regular people..
If you see educational costs, at one point in the 70s I think, the govt decided to offer loans so that students wouldn't need to do a job on the side to fund their education. Now it's ballooned to become such a mess..
They have absolutely not, with the noted exception of a few popular urban areas which house a relatively small minority of the population, been priced out for regular people.
The home ownership rate in the United States is 65.8%. San Francisco. Is. Not. Normal.
You don't understand Bitcoin. It is a system to remove human greed from the equation. However, currently we are in the monetization stage. People will get rich. Greed will prevail and it jump starts the system.
The beauty of Bitcoin is that no human can increase supply to address short-term interests, like central banks can. The energy is not wasted. To the contrary, it is used to ensure that the supply is distributed in the prescribed manner and that it is capped. There is no other way of creating a decentralized system that has this feature.
If you want a resource that's limited and can't be created by central banks, why not use something like Gold/Silver like we used to? While not going trying to debate on whether we should
or should not use a limited resource as currency, but if we did Bitcoin seems like a wasteful thing to use.
Not a bitcoin fanboy, but that's a bit strong a statement. What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation? Is innovation rewarded with (taxed, regulated) wealth greed, and if so, is that "bad"? And if it creates Teslas and rockets that land, and robots on Mars that last a year or more analyzing samples, is it a fatal flaw?
Some more questions... So let's say BTC is greed - the many financial instruments out there, derivatives, credit default swaps, funds of funds, the crazy options stuff going on ... and you drew the line at BTC?
"It's that old SF-trope that the cause of many of humanity's biggest problems is humans."
Fitting for a city known today for its vast outdoor tent cities of homelessness.
I feel that comments like this are a disservice to HN, for while the comment attempts to sound erudite and logical, it is simply moral relativism in disguise.
"Greed" is neither good nor bad, but instead it is a pathological optimization. Optimizing for profit, by definition, is an "unwillingness to acknowledge externalities", as stated by the GP. Optimizing for profit resulted in many bad situations for Americans (see the Love Canal and the Cuyahoga River) and it was the reason the United States created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so that negative externalities could be converted into dollars.
To bring into the discussion "Teslas" and "rockets that land" changes the argument from the demonstrable "bitcoin is bad for the planet" to a morally relative argument of "yeah, but it got us rockets and Teslas", which does nothing other than prove GPs point: to say that that Teslas and landing rockets are worth the price of Bitcoin is to ignore or disregard the externalities!
And it's hard to imagine that the GP "drew the line" at Bitcoin; to take that as the position is making a straw-man argument. Instead, an interpretation that would lead to valuable discussion should be adopted, like the position that Bitcoin both demonstrates the flaws of greed and that it does so in a way that is simple to understand and demonstrate, especially when it comes to externalities. Financial instruments are complex and opaque on purpose, designed to confuse and obfuscate greed. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a much simpler equation: money versus power consumed versus pollutants produced.
Finally, a suggestion to all: avoid acronyms, or at least spell them out on first use. It's highly likely that "SF" meant "Science Fiction" and not "San Fransisco". Knowing the correct definition of an acronym can help avoid embarrassing situations.
Your response and charges of moral relativism are longer than the comment you're replying to. It's as if you're liberally reading into motivations and even psychology, in order to make your point about externalities.
Don't tell people what their motivations are. The original comment talked about greed, my comment questions our definitions of greed.
Edit: Can't you just reply and make a point about externalities instead of being essentially passive-aggressive?
> Finally, a suggestion to all: avoid acronyms, or at least spell them out on first use. It's highly likely that "SF" meant "Science Fiction" and not "San Fransisco". Knowing the correct definition of an acronym can help avoid embarrassing situations.
Wowzers. How about you design the guidelines for conversations, and we can defer to you if there's ever any ambiguity.
Bitcoin innovated through a blockchain years ago and the world has already adopted that. But the current state of bitcoin makes it bad at its other 'innovation', digital currency.
Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a widespread, standard currency which seems to be the "reason" people say it's worth as much as it is. But it will never be a widespread currency until it has stability. So it's a chicken/egg situation, one of the two has to come first for the other, and both ideas rely on each other.
Most people that hold bitcoin today are doing so because they think it will increase in value, NOT because they care about the stability or viability of currency. That's pretty selfish insofar there are plenty of developing nations that would benefit greatly from a stable currency. Bitcoin might still be more stable than some countries, but that doesn't negate the issues.
So, because many people look at bitcoin as a wealth generator that produces tons of heat and waste, and it starts to look like a perfect marriage of shitty human behaviors.
How do you explain banks and hedge funds putting their money into it? Your explanation is that they want a digital currency, which you're saying is impossible. But it seems like the BTC advocates aren't arguing that, but instead that it's a store of value as a hedge against inflation?
No, I would argue hedge funds and banks are treating BTC like any other investment; They believe it will make money.
Banks and hedge funds don't inherently care about currencies. They care about the currency that governs their lives but beyond that everything is an investment. Banks don't provide mortgages because homes provide a stable economy or a stable currency. They do so because they will make money back on what they lend through interest. The fact that you store your dollars there is just one way for them to collect tons of assets for lending (among other things). This doesn't means banks care much about the volatility or exchange rate of the currency itself.
Hedge funds would only care about currencies insofar that it's an investment vehicle and investing in currencies can be a good investment. Bonds or other currency investments can increase over time without the volatility of BTC. A hedge fund is literally just an investment group, so it's pretty obvious they don't NEED to care about BTC stability or any stability at all.
Now, the question could be why would banks and hedge funds be willing to invest into such a volatile currency when they are usually risk adverse (banks more than hedge funds). And that would be a good question, except BTC has kept going up and now crypto as a whole is just another ETF market. So there are plenty of safe ways to hedge your bets on BTC or crypto generically without actually believing in the underlying philosophical justifications.
EDIT: Also, I don't think that it's impossible to have a crypto currency that is viable and stable. I think Ethereum has a fairly logical approach to their core issues that could solve the issues down the road. We'll see. I do think it'll be hard for BTC to become a viable currency because of how pumped up it is, and people treat it like an infinite money machine. Until the systemic issues of the BTC ethos are solved, I don't see a promising future for BTC as a widespread currency. But, it might have value in setting up the infra that the future crypto that IS viable will use.
I wonder if more mainstream investors waited a while to make sure BTC is liquid. I don't know the details of this - I guess there must be reliable enough exchanges now to serve customers of that caliber.
>What is "greed" versus motivation for innovation?
I don't have exact data, but my gut feeling tells me that 99.99% of the people buying cryptocurrencies today are driven by greed instead of innovation.
> and you drew the line at BTC?
Not really, if you look at the perspective that we already have enough instruments for financial manipulation and greed, why introduce another one that consumes so much energy?
>Fitting for a city known today for its vast outdoor tent cities of homelessness.
I mean...you know that's a completely man-made problem right?
I don't have any but I get the feeling that a lot of people here are just salty that they were thinking of buying and didn't. Just venting that regret..
> many financial instruments out there, derivatives, credit default swaps, funds of funds, the crazy options stuff going on ... and you drew the line at BTC?
That seems like you are putting words into the GP’s mouth.
Nobody is saying these other instruments aren’t also ‘greed’, just that Bitcoin is no better.
That’s relevant because one part of the Bitcoin narrative is that it is actually better in some way, and not just another speculative instrument.
Again, I'm not a BTC fanboy, I don't even own any. But obviously it solves SOME problems - like how to transfer some sort of store of value across borders without using a bank. That's one of them.
It's not tulips and 100% useless. A digital currency is interesting to explore. It's interesting enough that institutions are stuffing their cash into it because they are fearing inflation, and the old school explanations of why we won't get inflation are now being questioned.
Don't ask me to forcefully argue for or against, there are many other people on this thread to argue both positions. But you can't say it has NO utility.
Hi, thanks for the reply, makes sense what you said. I am not looking for strong stances or arguing; I just want to expand my understanding. I get from you that institutions pour real money into it and they rely on bitcoin's scarcity to overcome inflation. Makes sense. However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad? Nowadays there are low fees, way lower than what Bitcoin offers today. And that is just one aspect. It's just an opinion but I feel that money transfer problems caused by banks are exaggerated, especially in developed countries. Can you explain why I might be wrong about it? I also do not own Bitcoin, my employer is not a bank and I do not have any involvement or desire to promote the banking or payments industry.
> However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad?
I've never done it, but when I lived abroad and I had to transfer money, I got fleeced by banks and then (a few years ago) there weren't really any alternatives. I don't have any skin in the game with Bitcoin, but I guess that left a foul taste in my mouth.
There've been other comments about Bitcoin that are a bit more nuanced and interesting, in one case there was a gentleman from Argentina making an impassioned case for the use over and against the polices of his government.
I think there's an element of institutional mistrust that Bitcoin claims - maybe wrongly, given how centralized it is - to solve.
Certainly the most important value proposition from the companies behind the established cryptocurrencies is the decentralized network for value transfers. No more "brokerage" firms. Getting rid of these feels like an emotional fulfillment; and today this beats pragmatism. Thanks for writing.
This is silly. Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free. You get a choice between bitcoin mining and military force. Which do you find less harmful?
Edit: I should clarify. I am saying that the status of the USD as a reserve currency has led to lots of US military action.
No one here is arguing for replacement of military force, your brain got stuck by a common fallacy it seems.
Notice how displacing some military force usage by changing the motivation or capability for intervention (for example to maintain a currency advantage) might be in itself a Good Thing (tm) and how it does not require replacing armed forces entirely.
Not sure what you are going for here. Indeed, reading a single sentence without considering context typically leads one to faulty conclusions. Note that the previous sentence in the parent post is "Consensus (probably, I am doubtful of PoS) isn't free."
Military force and law enforcement provide solutions for consensus across great many domains, so they're marginally near-free to use for consensus in any single area of interest. You could say, they are consensus factored out and made incarnate.
Conversely, if all money suddenly become Bitcoin, military force and police would still be needed, in mostly the same amount they are today.
It's odd to me that people think Bitcoin can be free of "force" long term. Bad guys can point a gun at your head and demand you login into Coinbase to transfer coins to them. What happens if the government makes Microsoft give them admin accounts to the Bitcoin repo? What happens if there is a fork and China doesn't like it and prohibits miners from adopting it? BTC is way more susceptible to traditional military and government might then people make it out to be.
I don't think it will eliminate the need for the military or police force entirely. I have seen a lot of bold bitcoin claims but I don't think anyone really does.
My post was referring to how the US has killed lots of people to keep strong dollar. I think its feasible that a true global currency (possibly bitcoin) could prevent violence like this.
Exactly. Fossil fuels and rare earth metals are already considered to be a national security risks. Depending on a currency with huge energy requirements only multiplies this risk, which further incentivizes war.
Energy scarcity is a thing of the past for anyone who wants it to be. Between solar and nuclear, it's a helluva lot easier to get basically unlimited renewable energy than it is to go to war. Malthus hasn't been right about the way the world works in 200 years
I doubt they would just roll over yeah. If you consider the dollar as a weapon/tool for US hegemony, bitcoin functions as almost like a terrorist entity. Not clear what to do with this information
It's just a risk that the value of it drops to near zero if it's outlawed.
Or it could become highly regulated and be much less useful for trade due to onerous compliance requirements. For example, how do you prove that wallet X that one is sending money to isn't going to someone who's in an embargoed country?
It's a big risk. But, to answer your second question, its a public ledger. Its significantly more conducive to surveillance than cash. Just punish people if they send money to an unverified address.
I think that's a gross possibility, and I hope no governments take this measure, but I don't think it would be difficult.
I don't disagree with you, I just don't personally believe that it will become a major instrument of trade due to it removing a major component of economic policy. I believe that most countries would rather have their citizens use their national currency as opposed to a foreign or electronic one, since that allows them a lot more control on inflation.
From that perspective, it seems to follow that most governments would want to regulate cryptocurrencies, and probably not in the way that Bitcoin bulls would like it to be.
I could definitely be wrong on this though. I thought in the past that the ad model of Facebook and Google would go nowhere, and look where they're at now.
I don't really know either. Maybe you're right, but as a (maybe ridiculous) counterpoint, what benefit does it give a government to have their own currency? I think the main benefit is not having to rely on another government to keep it stable... or to avoid the subservience that follows from having to rely on acquiring said currency from another government. For most countries now practically I think this means 'not giving the US complete control over our politics and not having to buy USD from them'.
Are there any other benefits? If not, wouldn't adopting bitcoin be an easy solution to monetary policy while avoiding this issue? Or am I missing something?
This would be a pretty long topic to discuss, but in general monetary policy is something that governments really do want to control. If a national economy is not doing well or there is little demand for their goods or currency, the value of their currency is lower, making their exports cheaper and allowing them to participate in the global markets.
One example of having monetary policy out of a country's control is the EU, which has both strong economies (eg. Germany) and weaker ones (eg. Greece). A strong Euro works well for Germany, since they get more effective purchasing power out of their trade surplus. For Greece, a strong Euro means that their exports are probably not competitive price wise.
If these countries had their own currency, the Deutsche Mark would be a strong currency (making their exports relatively more expensive) and the Greek Drachma a weaker currency (making their exports relatively less expensive), giving them a push towards a more even trade balance. As citizens tend to transact in local currency, this also encourages Greek citizens to seek more local goods (eg. Greek tomatoes grown on Greek soil with Greek labor) as foreign goods are more expensive, hence further stimulating their economy.
I grant the other points, but if the government took over the bitcoin repo and changed it, why wouldn't people just keep using the old version of the software?
How so? Seems correct to me. Just this morning I had the choice of paying for groceries either with Bitcoin or by launching a violent invasion of the store.
/u/nindalf this honestly made me laugh out loud and spill my drink. The next time I am trying to explain the concept of a false dichotomy, I am absolutely using this example. XD
If surveillance is increased a bit more, the government won't need to use force to get your money.. they'll just use some rootkit chip on whatever device to get your private key.
I am also doubtful of PoS but perhaps there's a way to make a greener coin using some amount of trust and regulation?
Well, technically you only need the threat of violence. Potential-but-unrealized violence is arguably much better for humanity than proof-of-ever-escalating wasted energy.
Maybe true depending on the energy source. I've heard it argued also that bitcoin will become the 'purchaser of last resort' for energy. For example, fracking companies often just burn off natural gas they find while looking for oil... instead, this gas could be used to mine btc. Also well documented that a lot of bitcoin operations in china are fueled by hydroelectric sources.
The promise of violence is free until realized though.
Hydroelectric sources that could be best used on homes, businesses, etc. Anything but Bitcoin, really.
Did everyone forget that the best goal we can achieve with power usage is by reducing consumption outright? Just because some of the mining is done on greener solutions doesn't mean it's a net positive.
Global warming isn't exactly going away if we keep this experiment up.
Yeah but good luck convincing people to move next to sources of energy so cheap it would be wasted otherwise (rural west texas, rural china). If bitcoin becomes the dominant global financial system, securing it will be a worthy use of energy.
I really hope you're wrong about that. Bitcoin becoming something like a world reserve currency will only make the problems infinitely worse. Be careful what you wish for, because future generations are going to be left holding the bag.
