2018-06-18 16:01:30
heh, this is funny considering it’ll be easier to saturate the IO on cloud vendors and DDoS quite a chunk of modern services than to do any of the categories they bring up
https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2018e5.htm Chapter V of the Annual Ecomomic Report 2018. Cryptocurrencies promise to replace trusted institutions with distributed ledger technology. Yet, looking beyond the hype, it is hard to identify a specific economic problem which they currently solve. Transactions are slow and costly, prone to congestion, and cannot scale with demand. The decentralised consensus behind the technology is also fragile and ...
Rotonen
2018-06-18 16:37:54
I think it would be a lot cheaper to DOS bitcoin by spamming transactions than to DOS the likes of VISA or Mastercard
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 16:41:54
for probably ~0.5 BTC you could monopolize all the space in a block. at 6 blocks/hour & $6400/btc, that is ~$19,000/hour to make bitcoin transactions cost prohibitive
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 16:53:21
if you mine the blocks yourself it costs nothing
Fireduck
2018-06-18 16:53:29
but that is a big if
Fireduck
2018-06-18 16:55:55
it would be hilarious to run a mining operation which didn't both including any transactions
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 16:56:23
still "it costs nothing" ignores opportunity cost.
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 16:57:03
just like claiming mining on self-sustaining solar power is "free electricity". You could be selling that electricity to the grid
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 17:16:56
right, if you are mining that much you would probably really prefer bitcoin do well
Fireduck
2018-06-18 17:17:09
since you have millions of dollars of sha-256 hardware
Fireduck
2018-06-18 18:10:23
One of magic things about PoW - the method of legitimate use and “exploitative” use depends on basically the same hardware - so there is always a balanced opportunity cost for either
Jimtalksdata
2018-06-18 18:11:27
Vs. knowing how to exploit the VISA network translates into little to no experience into how to run a payment processor company
Jimtalksdata
2018-06-18 18:11:50
spamming transactions doesn't require any PoW
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 18:12:27
Miners make decisions on whether to include the spam
Jimtalksdata
2018-06-18 18:12:57
so?
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 18:13:23
miners will include the transactions with higher fees.
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 18:13:56
Then either spammers pay high enough fees to subsidize miners, or spam slows down
Jimtalksdata
2018-06-18 18:14:01
correct
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 18:14:12
which, like I said, is not very expensive
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 18:14:17
System is self correcting in this way
Jimtalksdata
2018-06-18 18:14:41
try and DDOS VISA for < $20,000 hour
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:26:50
also: visa runs its own infra for the critical bulk, did not mean what got implied here
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:27:38
most meaningfully big things actually run their own beefy infra for the bulk and use the cloud for distributing peak loads
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:28:09
maybe, maybe not
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:29:11
Over time, I think most will move to cloud
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:44:06
depends, if you can save your on premises staff into the margin of amazon, sure, but at a larger scale the price of electricity dominates again and you save yourself the premises and staff back from the amazon margins on that
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:45:04
and as transitions both ways are with a lot of inertia, and the company is older, makes sense to play a bit of both games
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:45:37
of course, you assume your company can be as efficient in electricity as a cloud provider
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:45:41
I'm incredulous
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:46:11
but yeah, big legacy companies are going to be hybrid for a while at least
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:46:26
they already have big capex investments. no reason to throw those out
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:46:27
fresh high margin services or consumer oriented companies will prolly never leave the cloud just for the HR simplicity
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:46:58
yup
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:47:06
in a lot of countries governmental subsidies flip that dynamic
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:47:33
government subsidies to run your own DC?
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:48:02
no, just for new tech sector electricity
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:49:02
hmmm, not familiar with that. you have a link to an article discussing it I can check out? or just something you've run in to in your work?
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 22:56:21
did not find the tekes (.fi) program in english, but apparently this is now a thing for bitcoin miners as well:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/bitcoin-mining-arbitrages-cheap-electricity-into-money/555416/ A close-up portrait of bitcoin miners in eastern Washington reveals the real hustle at the heart of cryptocurrencies.
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:59:06
here’s the current eu summary, but that’s a bit of a slog to try to make sense of or to find an example:
https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/ECOFYS%202014%20Subsidies%20and%20costs%20of%20EU%20energy_11_Nov.pdf
Rotonen
2018-06-18 22:59:19
thnx
Tyler Boone
2018-06-18 23:00:00
but i’ll hold the cloud is an uncanny valley of premises and staff vs. electricity
Rotonen
2018-06-18 23:01:53
IIRC both github and gitlab went off the cloud at some point for the dynamic, though the gitlab wtiteup on it revealed their issue was more their ceph architecture than the lack of bang per buck in the cloud
Rotonen