ahnick

> Companies have spare storage…but it sure as shit ain’t worth it to them. This is the hubris of most crypto projects: they have no real economic grasp of the problems they jump into. Amazon isn’t going to fuck around with Chia for what amounts to literal dust on their balance sheet. Businesses aren’t going to jeopardize their core competency for a couple of bucks. And the average Joe doesn’t actually have external storage space. Spotify, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. It’s all professional miners. Chia is not decentralized.

Which companies will adopt it and which ones won't is probably hard to determine from the outside. It should be a fairly objective evaluation though internally for a company in terms of what hardware the company currently has and what it will cost to farm Chia and what future expected value for Chia may be. Chia has somewhere between 300K - 400K full nodes operating on the network. That is objectively more decentralized than Bitcoin that has somewhere on the order of 40K - 80K full nodes the last time I checked. So I would say Chia is the most decentralized network I currently know of.

> The payoff for the lottery is HUGE. So even though the EV is negative, people still do it. The payoff for Chia is comparatively small. People won’t (and don’t) care.

That will be a function of the price of Chia. As Chia's price increases more and more people will want to get into that lottery. A lot more people will consider farming some plots of Chia if one XCH is worth $50K compared to $250.

> I definitely want to destroy my Home Nas in a matter of months to make a little money.

That won't happen unless your NAS is a bunch of consumer grade SSDs, which I hope it is not.

Again, it was only cost-effective to build farming rigs in the very beginning. It is no longer cost-effective to do so. Even major companies will eventually have a tough time competing with the amount of storage space that is already deployed in the world. IIRC is around ~7 Zettabytes. That is the big difference with Bitcoin. Chia is making use of a resource that already exists in the world and is well distributed. Bitcoin ASICs require manufacturing and building machines for the specific purpose of mining Bitcoin and then distributing those machines.

The amount of XCH (Chia's currency) generated is a constant 64 Chia every 10 minutes. You can find this under the Chia Business Whitepaper (https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02...) in the section "Post-launch Chia Emission Schedule". If you have a bigger disk that is filled with plots, then you are increasing the security of the network and thereby increasing the odds that you will win the block reward.

For example, if you had 36EiB of space filled with plots then you would be equal to the entirety of the current Netspace of the Chia Network. (https://www.chiaexplorer.com/blockchain/blocks) So you would win the reward half the time and the rest of the network would win the reward the other half of the time. (i.e. 32 XCH every 10 minutes) Of course, this is an absurd example, as to obtain that amount of space it would probably cost you on the order of $20 billion just to procure the equipment, but at least it should give you an idea about how disk size works in regards to Chia.

Yeah plotting on a laptop with a 100GB free is not worth it (especially since they typically have consumer ssds in them), but there is a lot of spare storage space on servers/external drives owned by individuals or companies globally speaking. This global storage distribution that already exists and the fact that no specialized hardware (ASICs) are needed is why Chia has been able to become more decentralized than any other cryptocurrency currently.

It will be interesting to see how things centralize or decentralize going forward. When I think of the lottery I'm always amazed by the number of people that play it even with the extraordinarily low odds of winning that exist. I think there will be some equilibrium that's found for the global number of operating nodes that will be a function on the odds of finding a proof and Chia's price.

> That's why Chia is only more efficient than PoW when it isn't in demand.

Actually that's incorrect. Chia is always more efficient than PoW, b/c in PoW everyone is constantly racing to solve every block. (i.e. find the proof) Whoever finds the proof gets the block reward and everyone else just throws away all that work for nothing and then the next race starts for the next block reward.

Contrast that with Chia, where when you are plotting you are storing your proofs in a file for later challenges. You aren't discarding that work and you can hold onto it for a long time (years). It's not until you are "farming" the plot that you start answering challenges. The challenges just translate to simple reads from disk, which are quick constant time lookups. Now it may take you a long time (or never) to find a reward for a single proof, but at least you didn't have to throw all that work away and start over.

This is only really true when plotting to consumer grade SSDs, which are limited in the number of writes that they can support. NAS systems usually contain mechanical HDDs and can handle the write load of Chia without issue.

What people who read this article may not realize is that this is the Chia incentive model actually working properly. It is not cost effective to buy new hard drive equipment to farm(mine) Chia. (This was well discussed by Chia Network and the community before mainnet launch) Chia is really designed to be used to farm existing available storage space that people or companies already have for other purposes. For example, a home NAS system that may currently only be using a small portion of it's capacity. People can then slowly fill that space overtime and potentially make some money from their unused space.

The only time it made sense to buy new equipment to try to plot really quickly, was right at the start before Netspace increased. Chia now has somewhere on the order of 300,000 - 400,000 full nodes operating on the network (already making it more decentralized than Bitcoin) and is approaching 36EiB of space. The "green" benefit of Chia is that you don't throw away the proofs that get generated like you do with Bitcoin mining and instead you can keep them for many years and potentially decades. This is where a lot of the power savings come from. Take a look at https://chiapower.org/ to understand the power usage compared to existing cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The midway point in the sea level tool you linked is actually 1.41m by 2100. That's 4.6 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century and this is based on our current models where we are continuously discovering more and more positive feedback mechanisms that is accelerating sea level rise. (https://www.science.org/news/2020/11/seas-are-rising-faster-...) Now those levee walls that were originally 13 feet high are now less than 9 feet from the water and no longer really capable of doing the job they were designed for. So we better build bigger walls to keep all the water out, so let's go back and spend billions and billions more to have bigger walls, which by the way encourages more and more people to move into flood prone areas. Then you really set things up for a black swan event where something unexpected causes a levee failure (b/c that's never happened before) and then a bunch of people die.

So maybe you and your kids MIGHT be okay, but your grandkids and your great-grandkids? probably not.

It's not the only solution I can think of, but it's the only practical one. Sure you could build giant sea walls around the area or bring in land and start literally raising all the buildings above sea level (similar to what Chicago did in the mid 1800s), but you are talking billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions. Once you get into that situation it just makes sense to move everything upstream and perhaps only fortify key infrastructure like ports until even those pieces have to be relocated.

The army corps of engineers is not given the option of not trying to save New Orleans. People in government tell them to go build levees and protect the city from flooding and they do the best job that they can, but they are fighting a losing war. The time to introduce relocation assistance programs is now, so you spread the cost and process out over many years; otherwise, you are going to just end up doing the same thing later, but it will cost more money and more lives will have been lost.

300+ years? And the biggest risk to the city is environmental activists and the EPA? You must be joking.

The biggest risk is the fact that according to our best estimates by 2050 sea level rise will be another 1.5 feet in that area. (https://sealevel.nasa.gov/ipcc-ar6-sea-level-projection-tool) For an area that is already on average 7 feet below sea level. New Orleans topography is basically a bowl between Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Couple that with stronger and more frequent hurricanes and there will be few places left to live in New Orleans and the surrounding area.

People who give other people a false sense of hope is what endangers lives and sets up future generations for devastation. If you really want to help people you need to break the cycle and subsidize relocation costs for those who currently live there that can't afford to move. All these mitigation efforts like restoring the natural coastal barriers may delay some flooding (so sure do it), but it will not prevent the inevitable and it is coming much sooner than 300+ years.

As the article rightly points out, levees will do nothing for a slow moving hurricane like Harvey that dumps tons of rain or for a large cat5 hurricane with storm level surges that are much higher than Ida. The place is sinking while sea level rise is already locked in with current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The only solution is relocation, but nobody wants to hear that. It is an inevitability that New Orleans will be uninhabitable. The only question is when.

What do you use for maps/navigation?

Are there any thought pieces on how cities can adapt roads to accommodate SAE level 4 cars to facilitate rolling out a wider deployment more quickly? I'm thinking of something like cities could designate specific routes and lanes for L4 cars with designated drop-off locations and also only allow the service to be operational during clement weather conditions. It seems it would be beneficial to have fully automated routes to and from specific spots even today, for example an airport to a downtown location, for many cities to help reduce transportation costs and safety issues as compared with Uber/Lyft.

I'll see your cogongrass and raise you trumpet vine. I kid you not, every 3 weeks during the summer I am out cutting back the vine on top of my pergola that is a good 6 feet from my house and it still feels like I'm losing the war. This thing drops seeds all over the place and vines start sprouting from all the beds and grass. If it reaches a tree it starts to climb it like crazy and if it touches the house for long enough it will suction on to the mortar/woodwork and you will have a devil of a time getting it off. (https://www.botanicalamy.com/warning-about-invasive-plants/)

First, this can already be done using MakerDAO CDP loans. Convert crypto to DAI using a CDP loan and then convert DAI to USD to purchase a property. Second, there are many people that own cryptocurrency that are not money launderers and tax evaders who might like the convenience of paying their mortgage with cryptocurrency.

Is documentation for the provenance of funds, typically required in all cash real estate transactions?

If you are going to go down the vim as an IDE path, wouldn't you just use Onivim? (https://v2.onivim.io/) Or is the licensing the issue?

> Not "the opposite". Exactly as I said: a lot of people would end up paying more, for no health benefit.

No, what happens is this money eventually flows back in terms of lower healthcare costs overall.

> That is merely your own opinion, but you seem to think that this is a fact. If you are so sure, I'm sure you have some good sources for that? I mean, the first study you linked actually doesn't speak in your favor.

It actually did. Unfortunately, you can only lead a horse to water.

> So this term is used simply for surplus calories. Sure, sugars can be surplus calories, but if I eat 2500kcal of protein in a day and my body only burns 2000kcal, then 500 of these are excess calories. But I could have left out 500 of any of these 2500kcal to avoid excess calories. So my point still stands.

I'm glad we agree sugar can be considered surplus calories. The point is when we are trying to reduce people's overall number of calories from their diet we could eliminate any calories, but we should try and eliminate the ones that don't provide any benefit and in fact have negative consequences first.

So would it be possible to make a mini hydrogen power plant from a rain water cistern and scrap aluminum?

> Seems you really want to do something against obesity and you are ready to accept quite a lot of collateral damage by punishing people with extra tax who don't need to be protected/helped at all.

Actually, quite the opposite. People who don't consume foods with lots of added sugar are already healthier and wouldn't end up paying a lot more for their food. The people who are consuming lots of added sugar are contributing to the growing problem of chronic diabetes. Right now we are all being punished with higher health insurance premiums and reduced benefits, because more and more people are having to go on insulin, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, metformin, etc. You know how you reduce health care costs and help people? You prevent disease from starting in the first place, but that means instituting programs and incentives that actually change people's behavior. If you have a sugar tax whose funds go into programs to encourage healthy eating, working out, etc., then that is a net win for society, since over time less and less people will develop type 2 diabetes and other illnesses caused by obesity. This is not a new concept and has been successful before. Most notably in the form of cigarette taxes. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/)

> I on the other hand believe that the sugar itself is a minor problem, the bigger problem is the lack of physical activity and micro-nutritients.(sic)

Increasing physical activity and micro-nutrients are great goals, but do not play a large part in the obesity epidemic. The over-consumption of high caloric food is the root cause. It takes a lot of time to lose weight through physical activity. Run 30 minutes on treadmill and maybe you will lose 300 calories? That probably won't even offset half of many people's lunch calories. Again, the majority of calories are lost through just breathing out. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-ySWyID9o) It's a much easier and more effective strategy to reduce the amount of calories coming in. That's why intermittent fasting has become so popular.

> But that's my personal assessment and as your study says, we don't know enough yet how much impact the different factors really have, so no one really knows. However, increasing bureaucracy based on not well understood concepts is probably a fairly bad idea.

Just because we don't fully understand the role of all the biochemical processes involved in insulin resistance, obesity, etc. doesn't mean we don't understand the broader causes and the changes that should be made to diets to improve health outcomes. Your argument is similar to saying just because we don't understand all the mechanisms that cause the earth to heat up we shouldn't try and reduce CO2 emissions. It's nonsensical.

> Sorry that doesn't make any sense. If I ate 2500 calories today and 500 of them were "excess" (because daily I burn only 2000), then which of the 2500 are now your so-called "excess calories"?

Sure, it does. As you yourself stated "added sugar has zero good micro-nutrients", by definition these are excess calories that you don't need. If we need to reduce people's consumption of calories then the first to go should be the ones that aren't providing any benefit.

> Well, then I disagree. There's people getting no diabetes even though eating a lot of sugar and I bet there's also a lot of people getting or having diabetes without eating any sugar.

The only people getting diabetes without eating sugar are the ones that are genetically predisposed to it. (i.e. Type 1 Diabetes) We are not talking about those people. We are talking about the people who get diabetes because of insulin resistance due to being obese (Type 2 Diabetes). Sure there are lots of foods that don't contain sugar like chicken breasts, vegetables, legumes, etc; however, these are not the foods people are eating that is causing them to become obese. It's really hard to overeat those kinds of foods only, because you will become full and stop eating before you have consumed way too many calories.

> I don't think that's how it works.

I mean you can think anything you want, but you thinking something is not going to change the basic science. People can only gain weight by consuming more calories than they use. The majority of people are losing most of their calories by just breathing every day. Even if they introduce regular exercise they won't significantly change the calories out number, so the only choice left is to shrink the calories in number and the easiest way to do that is remove foods from your diet that contain a lot less added sugar.

> If anything, it is a surplus of calories in general, but that can happen without sugar and it also doesn't explain how it even comes to this surplus.

> To me it honestly feels as if you are just trying to make your life easy by finding an "easy" solution.

Sure, in principle obesity can happen with any food or additive, but in practice the leading contributor is sugar. You don't need to believe me you can DYOR on this subject. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6959843/) There are other foods that should be limited besides sugar, but the way you start tackling a problem like obesity/diabetes is eliminate the biggest contributors first and then work your way down.

> Replace sugar with fat and the same is true, no? So tax added fat as well? How about protein then?

In fact, the food industry did the opposite. They replaced all the added fat with sugar and that is why there is so much sugar in everything now. The other thing though we haven't talked about is the fact that foods with sugar tend to have a high glycemic index. A high GI value causes blood sugar levels and insulin to increase quickly, which in turn causes insulin to be overproduced and more fat to be stored. In effect, the sugar that replaced fat turned out to be worse, because of biochemical processes within the human body. Perhaps if the industry starts adding lots of fat back into food if sugar was eliminated, then there would need to be a fat tax. You'd get no argument from me there, but it is not such a big problem currently. As for protein, try and consume your daily caloric intake just eating chicken breasts some time. You'll probably throw up before you get there.

> Maybe you meant "doesn't make you feel as full as other things"? Well then I might agree, but here it becomes complicated - if you are actually consequent, you would not tax sugar, but things that "make you not feel as full", don't you agree?

No, it's not about taxing something that doesn't make you feel full. It's about taxing the biggest contributor that is adding lots of excess calories into your diet and effecting the chemical processes in your body to store more fat.

> You just said something very important: "too much". But what is too much? That question can't even be answered in general, because, for example, it is different for someone lying on their couch the whole day and someone doing extreme sports.

While the threshold for how much sugar can be consumed safely may vary from person to person, it is quite obvious that on the aggregate the majority of people in the world are consuming way more than they should. The AHA recommends an added sugar limit of no more than 36 grams per day for men. (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/a...) That means if you consume one can of regular coke you have already exceeded your limit for the day. You set public policy and pass laws based on the population at large and most people are not doing extreme sports. Also, for those that are doing extreme sports sugar consumption is best targeted pre-workout or during the workout for a quick boost of energy. They will still though get a lot of their glucose intake from natural sources of sugar and so even athletes should limit the amount of added sugar they consume.

> There is no debate that there is a correlation, but that's not a causation.

No, I'm saying that it is the cause. People consume food that contains sugar. Because the food contains all that added sugar the number of calories in the food is higher than it would otherwise be. This constant caloric surplus is what leads to obesity, which in turn leads to diabetes. (at least of the non-genetic variety)

> Also, what is it now, sugar or obesity? Because if it is obesity, then shouldn't we (by your logic) tax everything that leads to obesity and not just sugar?

The added sugar is why the food contains so many calories. If you remove the sugar you remove the additional calories. You don't need to tax everything. Just the sugar.

> But why do they consume too many calories?

Because people eat until they are satiated and unfortunately sugar does not make you feel full, but it does add a lot of calories; therefore, people end up consuming more calories than they should, since they are always eating until they are full.

> There was a post here on HN not long ago that claimed that the micro-nutritions (like minerals) of many vegetables have declined over the years. Maybe that contributes much more to "eating too much" than anything else. That's something to research first, before taxing stuff based on our gutfeeling imho.

This is not a gut feeling. Sugar is a high caloric food and the consumption of too much of it causes spikes in insulin that can lead to insulin resistance that in turn causes the pancreas to produce more insulin. High levels of insulin in the body cause more fat to be stored in cells and prevents the breakdown of fat. If we can deter people from consuming lots of sugar, then you can prevent this whole process from starting.

I didn't really think sugar causing obesity (and in turn causing diabetes) was open to debate? People gain weight because they consume too many calories and then eventually overweight people develop diabetes. The big calorie contributor to modern diets is the sugar content in food. For example, there are no shortage of stories of people losing weight just by cutting out soda from their diets.

Now, some people will change their life through incentives and some people won't. The nice thing about a sugar tax is that if the funds are appropriated for health care funding or UBI for low income individuals, then you can provide more of the opportunities you were talking about for people to get healthy (gym discounts, nutrition consults, etc.). The tax is two parts. Disincentivize the purchasing of high sugar content food and fund discounts or incentives that improve health outcomes.

It will teach people to eat things with less sugar. It's behavior modification via people's pocketbook. If you appropriated all funds derived from a sugar tax back into health care funding for people below a certain AGI, then it is probably a great way to improve health outcomes.

The short answer is lift weights (resistance training) to increase muscle mass and consume caffeine. Both of those will increase your resting rate metabolism.

who in turn reports to the government?

They are acting on behalf of the government.

A EULA cannot force you to give up your constitutional rights.

How is Apple's CSAM implementation not a violation of the fourth amendment?