Random Announcements
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WOW. I have just had a "Quarantine Support Officer" turn up at the house and request photo ID to check that I was self-isolating upon my return from Portugal….
I just received a phone call from the "Track & Trace" team. Checking that I was doing all the right things…..
Her - "Are you aware that you may be visited by one of our team to check that you are at the address you said you would be self-isolating at?"
Me - "Yes, already had a visit"
Her - "Wow, that is the first time I've ever heard that happen"Whatever I have done in the past is now catching up on me
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That's what I thought once…..I was wrong
hahah. guess I've been lucky enough to live to tell the tale.
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Track and Trace team….Quarantine support Officer!
Its like Jason Bourne over there ??? -
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It's pretty interesting… I'm working in a power plant that exists solely to mine Bitcoin. There are racks of servers and computers everywhere. The heat they give off is pretty incredible. I wish I could have taken a picture to show you but I am forbidden. This is an old power plant that was converted to a natural gas fired boiler. They say they are able to mine about four or five Bitcoin per 24 hours.
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I pulled this one from the internet so you can see. Pretty much the same here.
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Nothing personal, Mike, but what a gross use of energy in our warming world. Bitcoin makes me sick.
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Yeah they are probably going to get shut down soon anyway. No offense taken. Either way I thought it was interesting. Seems they are doing the same thing in Russia andnd China.
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“Subarugirl” makes me chuckle every time, [mention]Seul [/mention] . Those mining operations have popped up all over. I read an article about some town trying to block it from happening there because they were afraid it would overwhelm their grid. I can’t remember where it was.
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It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
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@Filthy:
It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
Yup – the most destructive force the world's ever seen…
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@Filthy:
It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
Yup – the most destructive force the world's ever seen…
There's people that think the we aren't the first human civilization there's been on earth because they keep finding artifacts that carbon date back to pre-human civilization times. Complex gadgets and stuff that shouldn't exist. Unless it's some kind of hoax.
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I’ve just finished reading “Annihilation” (the book the movie was based on). It is truly weird and beautiful and generally excellent, but it very much reinforced an idea I’ve always had about the planet and our place in it. We talk about destroying the planet and ruining nature, and we’re really not. We are damaging our own habit, but nature doesn’t care. Eventually our effect on natural processes will render the planet uninhabitable for human life, and nature still won’t care.
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I’ve just finished reading “Annihilation” (the book the movie was based on). It is truly weird and beautiful and generally excellent, but it very much reinforced an idea I’ve always had about the planet and our place in it. We talk about destroying the planet and ruining nature, and we’re really not. We are damaging our own habit, but nature doesn’t care. Eventually our effect on natural processes will render the planet uninhabitable for human life, and nature still won’t care.
I highly recommend reading the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy, Authority and Acceptance.
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@Filthy:
It seems totally frivolous to mine something completely theoretical that is a string of numbers that's supposedly worth 43k each. I am of the opinion that humans are a cancer on the planet and it probably be won't be long until we go extinct.
@Filthy what's cool about blockchain (not the mining per se) is the notion of digital scarcity, which was impossible before–it is all too easy to copy bits in the digital realm. One has to reconsider the concept of theft even; if you "steal" something digital, you haven't deprived someone else (much like ideas and intellectual property). Some would say this isn't theft and that it is impossible without depriving the owner (I'm not one of them).
But as to the "supposedly worth 43k each," I would go a level deeper and question what 43k really means in the first place? Isn't that every bit as arbitrary? I feel that money is arbitrary unless tied to a durable physical good with intrinsic value, and that hasn't been the case for some time. It is, as William Gibson put it (talking about "cyberspace," a term he invented), a "consensual hallucination" that money has any worth. If we all decided that it didn't, it wouldn't.
And as for humans being a cancer, humanity has existed as a species living in balance for longer than it has a cancerous, positive feedback cycle of consumption. The issue IMO isn't humans, it is the rise of agriculture and the industrial revolution (civilization) that triggered resistance to famine and a positive feedback cycle of exponential population growth and attendant resource consumption that has run unchecked ever since. The history of this civilization is very short, and in that short time our exponential growth has brought us to the brink of collapsing the Earth's ability to support us. This is a great piece on how short our time here really is:
Can't agree more with @neph93 that the Earth will not notice and life will continue, though I'd hate to see a species that was capable of colonizing the solar system (and should the laws of physics allow it, the galaxy) meet such an ignominious end (while taking a number of species with it).
