One can generate one's private keys by physically rolling dice and choosing words, thus avoiding the problem of rigged random number generators. The government still doesn't control physics (or economic laws, come to think of it!).
482 karma · joined October 7, 2017
Right now they don't they at least need a court order (i.e. they'd have to prove probably cause) to compel a bank to give them people's data?
Sounds like a big change to me, and further erosion in the protection rule of law theoretically provides people against tyranny.
It /is/ amazing the progress we've seen in our lifetimes. I remember life before the web (http) was invented, before mobile phones (much less smartphones) became commonplace.
Some of the supposed 'progress' is really regression---like the number of people who economically could productively use computers but think a mainstream smartphone can let them do the same things. Sure, they can web browse, access online banking, ticketing, commerce, and other services through apps, but they usually miss out on the entire creative and productive side of computing.
However, I don't just blame technology. At least in Occidental countries, we tell ourselves we're consumers, vocabulary that hides the fact we're also producers/creators in our work. But it fits a mechanistic view of society, and works well with the central planners Utopian pretensions.
I love hearing of projects like the OPs---breathing new life into unused machines.
Do you have any pointers what sort of equipment to use to measure the power draw? Are you simply measuring it from a UPS?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatuor_pour_la_fin_du_temps
Author of "A Wrinkle in Time" Madeleine L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus had already done the heavy theological lifting, and the current need was to learn from him (and other church fathers) and recontextualize their insights for the church today.
For many protestants I've known, the church fathers and the ecumenical councils are seen as helpful, but never carrying the same authority as the Scriptures. The authority of councils and creeds is derived from the Bible, not the inverse.
Except that they don't share the same god.
The Christian God is triune, one God existing in the three distinct persons of Father, Son, and Spirit, which the Jews and Muslims both reject.
Further, though Judaism and Christianity agree that the only true creator God, YHWH (or Yahweh/Jehovah according to Christianity), has revealed himself in deeds and words, Islam says that his name is Allah.
And of course, fundamental to Christianity is the acknowledgement of the full humanity /and/ full divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and resurrected. Judaism and Islam both reject those beliefs, thus we again see a difference on who God is.
These three monotheistic religions each have separate conceptions of God.
Hardship breeds creativity. Necessity is the mother of invention (except under excessive government intervention, which may be at the root of reservation problems).
Maybe if we could calculate the present day market value of all the land the US government stole from the Native Americans (I've heard we broke nearly every treaty we signed with the Native Americans... to our shame), that could be structural payments to encourage entrepreneurial activity on the reservation
So, though I'd been responsible for a long time, it didn't count like it would have if I'd engaged in a lot more borrowing. Problem was, I valued being debt-free sooner for the flexibility it gave me.
After all, look at the etymology of mortgage - mort gage (old French), literally "death pledge". Thanks, but I prefer life without that kind of constraint.
And if one is born into generational poverty, in a place highly dependent on government intervention, its probably really hard to access the mindset and opportunities for education and entrepreneurial examples that could start to break the poverty trend.
If nuclear wasn't so incredibly overregulated and if we hadn't had decades-long antinuclear smear campaigns, costs would come down and we would see it as an energy option that has incredible benefits with well-known tradeoffs. Its difficult engineering, but they're well-known problems.
During last July's heatwave, Texas's industrial bitcoin mining base "allow[ed] for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use.” [1] No other industrial-scale use of electricity can be turned off and back on when the grid needs excess capacity without harming that industrial production---you can't shut off a steel mill without enormous damage to production, or turn off a hospital without loss of life; but energy grid operators can sign contacts with bitcoin miners to have the right to dial them down to meet peak grid demand.
And yet, the NY Post article I sighted here spins the story anti-miners, missing the point: had the miner not been consuming power, the grid would have had 1% less to meet the peak heatwave demand. “There are over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load that responded to ERCOTs conservation request by turning off their machines to conserve energy for the grid.”
Imagine if there were ten times as many miners there---they would have been able to provide 10% additional power to the grid during peak demand.
[1] https://nypost.com/2022/07/13/texas-bitcoin-miners-halt-oper...).