4 ms·

It's an unworkable idea because: * Latency always increases * Satellites will fail due to radiation/solar panel degradation/distance from sun/etc. * Sending

by wyager 5y ago

It's an unworkable idea because: * Latency always increases * Satellites will fail due to radiation/solar panel degradation/distance from sun/etc. * Sending a missile fast is cheaper than sending a probe fast * There's no one on earth who is trustworthy enough to build these satellites without keeping the private keys

ta_666653467 5y ago
As far as the keys go, you can design a secure enclave to do the crypto then ensure a design element is that it can't create the key without being in space. Perhaps it is only active when acceleration is below 0.1g. Or, maybe it's designed to burn out if used in atmospheric conditions outside the vacuum of space. There are plenty of ways i could see it working so that the keys are very secure. The rest of your points are a feature for deflationary currencies, and perhaps ensures no one currency lasts more than a few decades.
- wyager 5y ago
  This is just kicking the can down the road - why would you trust e.g. Intel to do this correctly, without someone on the inside compromising the keys? The pressure to do so (financial, political, espionage-related, etc.) would be enormous.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28148409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28148409 EDIT: And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28147525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28147525
- rebuilder 5y ago
  So a trustless oracle? I really don’t think it’s simple at all. For starters, you have to assume the original creators of the project have backdoored their system in every way they possibly can.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    If we assume the code has been audited and that the "1,000 identical probes" idea mentioned above is implemented, then securely generating a random number is as easy as XORing the random numbers of a large enough group of mutually adversarial entities to guarantee that there isn't collusion between all of them.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >is below 0.1g below 0.1g for a minimum duration. otherwise, put it in the vomit-comet or similar to persuade the SE to generate the key.
CRConrad 5y ago
> It's an unworkable idea because: > * Latency always increases Yeah, sure... Except that's the whole idea. A resource is perceived as more valuable the scarcer it is; making sure it gets ever more scarce is a way of insuring against it decreasing in value, or hopefully even insuring an increase instead. What you're saying is like: > Bitcoin is an unworkable idea because: > The difficulty of "mining" those magic numbers always increases
- wyager 5y ago
  Except in this design, transaction verification always gets slower as well. Which makes the system less useful.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Sigh... You didn't understand the comment you replied to at all, did you? That's what makes the resource ever scarcer. It only makes the system "less useful" exactly as much as the ever harder-to-mine magic numbers make Bitcoin "less useful". Beats achieving the same goal by having to burn an ever larger fraction of the planet's energy.
    - wyager 5y ago
      No, it’s clearly you who’s misunderstanding something. Presumably the satellites also perform the same chain-commit function as miners (otherwise there’s no point), meaning as the satellites get farther away, committing a transaction takes longer. Bitcoin maintains scarcity without getting slower over time. You also seem to be under the false impression that Bitcoin requires monotonically increasing energy consumption. It does not. The amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin is a function of demand for security by its users, which presumably should equilibrate at some point. It sounds like your model of Bitcoin mining is not correct.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > Bitcoin maintains scarcity without getting slower over time. How? Isn't the whole point of Satoshi's algorithm that those magic numbers it takes to commit a transaction are ever fewer and farther between? So -- given the same model and number of computers -- it takes ever longer to "mine" the next one? That is, by definition, getting slower. If you're arguing that they're still finding the same, eh, number of magic numbers per day, that's only because they're "compressing time" by throwing ever more and ever faster computers at it. The point of Stross' idea was that this ever-increasing scarcity can be provided by astrophysics in stead of an algorithm, which AFAICS is pretty fucking genius. If your problem with that is "but then we can't beat the ever-increasing-scarcity algorithm by throwing ever more resources at the problem to keep up the speed!"... Well, then YTF use something based on ever-increasing scarcity in the first place? > You also seem to be under the false impression that Bitcoin requires monotonically increasing energy consumption. Well, no, not necessarily: If everyone just keeps their silly tokens where they are, I can see that it would take no energy at all. Not much of a "currency" then, though, if you can't actually do any trades with it, now is it? In practice, though: Yeah, that seems pretty much exactly what it has been requiring for all of its existence, and no end is in sight. > The amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin is a function of demand for security by its users, Huh? So Bit"coin" is millions of times as secure now as it was a decade or so ago? Wow, it must have had really crappy security back then. If you're saying it was so insecure then that it was pretty much fraud to sell it for real money, and sure, those guys should be in jail -- but fortunately it's a million times safer now... What do you then say to your equivalent (or yourself) ten years in the future, when they say the same about you now? > which presumably should equilibrate at some point. But it still hasn't, has it? And there is no such point in sight, or can you give us an approximate date? Within six months is precise enough... Unfortunately, the point where the actual resource usage exceeded what's reasonable to waste on silly games like this was passed long ago. So unless you can fix it so it goes back to where it was in, say, the third or fourth year by tomorrow, it's already so deep into unreasonable territory that shutting down the whole damn Ponzi scheme seems ever more like the only sensible thing to do, lest this fucking Paperclip Maximizer eat the world.

by wyager 5y ago

ta_666653467 5y ago

As far as the keys go, you can design a secure enclave to do the crypto then ensure a design element is that it can't create the key without being in space. Perhaps it is only active when acceleration is below 0.1g. Or, maybe it's designed to burn out if used in atmospheric conditions outside the vacuum of space. There are plenty of ways i could see it working so that the keys are very secure. The rest of your points are a feature for deflationary currencies, and perhaps ensures no one currency lasts more than a few decades.

wyager 5y ago
This is just kicking the can down the road - why would you trust e.g. Intel to do this correctly, without someone on the inside compromising the keys? The pressure to do so (financial, political, espionage-related, etc.) would be enormous.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28148409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28148409 EDIT: And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28147525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28147525
rebuilder 5y ago
So a trustless oracle? I really don’t think it’s simple at all. For starters, you have to assume the original creators of the project have backdoored their system in every way they possibly can.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  If we assume the code has been audited and that the "1,000 identical probes" idea mentioned above is implemented, then securely generating a random number is as easy as XORing the random numbers of a large enough group of mutually adversarial entities to guarantee that there isn't collusion between all of them.
dylan604 5y ago
>is below 0.1g below 0.1g for a minimum duration. otherwise, put it in the vomit-comet or similar to persuade the SE to generate the key.

CRConrad 5y ago

> It's an unworkable idea because: > * Latency always increases Yeah, sure... Except that's the whole idea. A resource is perceived as more valuable the scarcer it is; making sure it gets ever more scarce is a way of insuring against it decreasing in value, or hopefully even insuring an increase instead. What you're saying is like: > Bitcoin is an unworkable idea because: > The difficulty of "mining" those magic numbers always increases

wyager 5y ago
Except in this design, transaction verification always gets slower as well. Which makes the system less useful.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Sigh... You didn't understand the comment you replied to at all, did you? That's what makes the resource ever scarcer. It only makes the system "less useful" exactly as much as the ever harder-to-mine magic numbers make Bitcoin "less useful". Beats achieving the same goal by having to burn an ever larger fraction of the planet's energy.
  - wyager 5y ago
    No, it’s clearly you who’s misunderstanding something. Presumably the satellites also perform the same chain-commit function as miners (otherwise there’s no point), meaning as the satellites get farther away, committing a transaction takes longer. Bitcoin maintains scarcity without getting slower over time. You also seem to be under the false impression that Bitcoin requires monotonically increasing energy consumption. It does not. The amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin is a function of demand for security by its users, which presumably should equilibrate at some point. It sounds like your model of Bitcoin mining is not correct.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Bitcoin maintains scarcity without getting slower over time. How? Isn't the whole point of Satoshi's algorithm that those magic numbers it takes to commit a transaction are ever fewer and farther between? So -- given the same model and number of computers -- it takes ever longer to "mine" the next one? That is, by definition, getting slower. If you're arguing that they're still finding the same, eh, number of magic numbers per day, that's only because they're "compressing time" by throwing ever more and ever faster computers at it. The point of Stross' idea was that this ever-increasing scarcity can be provided by astrophysics in stead of an algorithm, which AFAICS is pretty fucking genius. If your problem with that is "but then we can't beat the ever-increasing-scarcity algorithm by throwing ever more resources at the problem to keep up the speed!"... Well, then YTF use something based on ever-increasing scarcity in the first place? > You also seem to be under the false impression that Bitcoin requires monotonically increasing energy consumption. Well, no, not necessarily: If everyone just keeps their silly tokens where they are, I can see that it would take no energy at all. Not much of a "currency" then, though, if you can't actually do any trades with it, now is it? In practice, though: Yeah, that seems pretty much exactly what it has been requiring for all of its existence, and no end is in sight. > The amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin is a function of demand for security by its users, Huh? So Bit"coin" is millions of times as secure now as it was a decade or so ago? Wow, it must have had really crappy security back then. If you're saying it was so insecure then that it was pretty much fraud to sell it for real money, and sure, those guys should be in jail -- but fortunately it's a million times safer now... What do you then say to your equivalent (or yourself) ten years in the future, when they say the same about you now? > which presumably should equilibrate at some point. But it still hasn't, has it? And there is no such point in sight, or can you give us an approximate date? Within six months is precise enough... Unfortunately, the point where the actual resource usage exceeded what's reasonable to waste on silly games like this was passed long ago. So unless you can fix it so it goes back to where it was in, say, the third or fourth year by tomorrow, it's already so deep into unreasonable territory that shutting down the whole damn Ponzi scheme seems ever more like the only sensible thing to do, lest this fucking Paperclip Maximizer eat the world.