8 ms·

Contributing to WebSockets – Cryptocurrency Users

99 points by Doches 4y ago

ricochet11 4y ago
- almost 4y ago
  For fucks sake you're not a repressed minority and not everything is conspiracy against you and your magic internet scam machine.
- bananadonkey 4y ago
  Speaking of full disclosure, how much crypto do you hold (a stake in)?
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  The motivation does not necessarily invalidate the claims.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Right. What invalidate the claims is him being "aware of the effort to build proof-of-stake models", because they are already exist.
    - gebruikersnaam 4y ago
      They might exist, but for now the proof-of-work coins still consume unhealthy amounts of energy. It's rather pointless to point out that other things exist besides the thing being criticized. "Murder is bad". "Yes, but food sharing exists".
      - soco 4y ago
        In this case the metaphor would rather be: "Murder is bad". "Yes but efforts to educate the population exist"
      - rglullis 4y ago
        Nonsense. The point is that he is putting PoW and all other types of blockchain systems on the same bag. If his criticism was specific to Bitcoin (or other popular PoW-based systems), then it would hold. But when he acknowledges alternatives and make it sound that they don't exist yet, then it is dishonest.
        pritambaral 4y ago
        I mean, as he says in his next line, "I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level.", it's clear he cares about it all on only one axis: "total energy consumption". PoS's mere existence doesn't affect that axis. I can complaign[1] about how polluting power plants are, knowing full well there exist nuclear power plants, and it wouldn't make me a hypocrite. Sth else might, but not this. 1: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Complaign https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Complaign
        rglullis 4y ago
        > "total energy consumption". Which is a bullshit criteria. It is like saying that you are not going to support electric cars until there exists no combustion engine and you are concern about emissions. If you are against cars as a whole, then state so, but don't use one subclass of them as prejudice against all of them.
        TomSwirly 4y ago
        Cars are a useful form of transportation. Hundreds of millions of people use one every day. Crypto has been around almost as long as the smartphone and so far the only applications which have emerged are crime and wild speculation. After fourteen years, any rational person should be pretty skeptical that any application that isn't "evading regulations" or speculation will ever appear.
        WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
        You wish. Just look at some hot heads still thinking communism is a good idea.
- pavlov 4y ago
  The past twelve years of cryptocurrencies is clear evidence that we can have open source permissionless infrastructure that’s utterly inadequate to support actual banking transactions on a global scale, or we can have centralized architectures that pretend to be permissionless and decentralized through a series of shell games and vague lies thus delivering the worst imaginable hybrid of banking and multi-level marketing. Faced with these choices, the status quo isn’t so bad after all. The other day I saw a news report that Wise (formerly Transferwise) does over $100 billion in money transfer volume annually. A classic startup seems to have been able to fix the problem of expensive international transfers much better than crypto-anything.
  - jcbrand 4y ago
    People love to talk as if the current situation is frozen in time, particularly when it comes to open source software. I've seen people complain about certain open source software based on their experience in 2016, as if nothing might have changed in the intervening years. There is continuous work being done on scaling. Things take time. We didn't have broadband internet immediately, there was a very long period of dialup, then slow DSL, ADSL and then eventually fast broadband. There was no way you could stream video on the early Internet. I wonder whether people back then also complained that it will never be able to replace television, actually... I'm pretty sure those people existed.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      It has been almost 15 to 20 years of Bitcoin and it is still very slow for payments. The supposed lightning network tends to centralisation inevitably which defeats the purpose of Bitcoin being decentralised. All the while the current system has been working very well.
      - jcbrand 4y ago
        Bitcoin is 13 years old. Dialup internet was used for more than 20 years.
- adave 4y ago
  that's nice of him, i would have blocked all y'all electricity mooching mfrs to hell.
  - Quindecillion 4y ago
    If Bitcoin miners are paying for or producing the electricity themselves, what's the problem? But that's not really the point though is it? Electricity use is not the problem. Carbon emissions are. If renewables are competitive with fossil fuels (hint: they are), and profit-driven Bitcoin miners are incentivized to seek out the cheapest sources of energy, then Bitcoin mining should be one of the "greenest" industries on the planet. Guess what? It already is greener than many other industries, with close to 60% of it's energy coming from renewable sources AND on top of that there are lots of operations popping up to capture and burn flared gas (i.e. methane, which is a far worse GHG than CO2). https://medium.com/@magusperivallon/a-financial-hail-mary-for-the-climate-an-argument-for-bitcoin-adoption-1a695b668529 https://medium.com/@magusperivallon/a-financial-hail-mary-fo...
    - bonzini 4y ago
      Is it greener because (as you said) Bitcoin mining with renewable energy is more profitable, and therefore they prevent other users of electricity from decreasing their carbon emissions?
    - TomSwirly 4y ago
      > with close to 60% of it's energy coming from renewable sources Only 30% of the world's electricity comes from renewables, so your claim seems really far-fetched. Your link does not mention the word "renewable" at all. Indeed, it seems barely related to your argument and wildly discursive. Citation for your wildly unbelievable claim? And if I sound angry, I am - every single Bitcoin advocate seems to think nothing of just making up facts whenever they please. It's appalling and unethical.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  > ...open source permissionless banking infrastructure I sincerely hope cryptocurrency delivers on its promises, but right now, there are too many ponzi schems, pyramid schemes, pump and dump schemes, fraud funds, fragile funds (all riding the hype train) to really make a case for it. Someday, perhaps? Until then (and regardless of one's affiliations), the stance that due to the resources cryptocurrency drains, it is best avoided or even boycotted, sounds reasonable to me.
  - Quindecillion 4y ago
    Bitcoin delivers on those promises and is working now. All other cryptos are some variation of those scams you mentioned. It's worth taking the time to understand why Bitcoin is different.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      No it isn't. Bitcoin is a crypto/cryptocurrency. They are all the same.
- nuclearnice1 4y ago
  You’re welcome to point out the conflict, but please drop the snark: “But of course that is not relevant to the discussion, because crypto users are evil vampires sucking away the life force of the world.”
- colesantiago 4y ago
  So what? The bank / payment services company the author works at isn't building a distributed pyramid scheme where people lose their money.
- shaky-carrousel 4y ago
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Ah there it is, the ad hominem attacks on anyone you disagree with. Wouldn’t be a crypto post without it. [edit] so we can move forward let me make this easier for you. I echo and restate and agree with everything they said and I have zero economic incentive one way or the other to say that.
- fock 4y ago
  https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blame/d8a436fc0eec66e6e9c4b4631124c0039ae63a25/docs/project/contributing.rst https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blame/d8a436fc0eec66... a quick look on his linkedin will tell you that that paragraph is there for a bit longer than he is working at Qonto. I guess you could tell us about your conflict of interest? Crypto users are either stupid (and future bag-holders), criminal (well, some people get rich) or naive (probably a lot of contributors...).
- sakarisson 4y ago
  Regardless of anything else, it's completely within the rights of an open-source maintainer to pick and choose which users they want to dedicate time to help. The license doesn't forbid anyone to use the software, so cryptocurrency companies are still able to benefit from the library.
- Planktonne 4y ago
  > Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure In theory, sure, but I'm not sure this has been demonstrated as in any way a practical/immediate concern that would influence the maintainer's views.
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  > But of course that is not relevant to the discussion, because crypto users are evil vampires sucking away the life force of the world. Not mutually exclusive. Crypto is a digital evil with no observable practical value, which reminds me of child-pornography.
- korijn 4y ago
  Why does it matter which is worse? You can't eat money.
- brainwipe 4y ago
  Not relevant because crypto isn't a threat to fiat banks any more than fiat currencies are a threat to crypto. It will remain that way until large scale human effort and day-to-day expenditure is directly payable by crypto. That's a long way off.
- api 4y ago
  > Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. That will be true as soon as people start using cryptocurrency for something other than gambling on its value in traditional fiat currency going up or scams.
- fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
  >Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. The only thing threatened by such things is the amount of time and money that devotees pour into them.
- closewith 4y ago
  You’re right - his motivation isn’t relevant. He’s under no obligation to support anyone.
- paulhodge 4y ago
  It’s not a ‘gotcha’ to point out that someone’s profession is aligned with their principles.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
  > A bank / payment services company. Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. I've heard this one before, but it was about "retail chains being threatened by the vastly superior multi-level marketing".
bkm 4y ago
Not a cryptophobe, but his rule seems reasonable: 'use it, but you won't get support if you use it for things I don't like'. Certainly better than the 'you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x' emerging trend in 'OSS' README's.
- samthecoy 4y ago
  Could you give some examples of this trend? (Not aware of it, personally—curious to see an example)
  - rvz 4y ago
    I haven't seen any example of such a trend which is why this is a very extreme position if not an irrational position to take. > I’m aware of efforts to build proof-of-stake models. I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level. > I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so. It's business as usual for them as the author is getting upset over PoW systems to taint all of them under the same brush despite many alternatives that are more energy efficient than others.
    - kaibee 4y ago
      > Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so. I believe the original creator of YOLO actually quit for that reason.
    - grnmamba 4y ago
      > Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance? ml5.js license: > This license gives everyone as much permission to work with this software as possible as long as they comply with the ml5.js Code of Conduct [...] ml5.js code of conduct: > Do not: [...] Use ml5.js to build tools of mass surveillance and prediction to repress the rights of people https://github.com/ml5js/ml5-library/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/ml5js/ml5-library/blob/main/LICENSE.md Not sure how enforcable this is but it exists.
Double_a_92 4y ago
While he is right, this still feels somewhat unprofessional. It's some arbitrary rant about something that he doesn't like, appended at the end of the contributing guide. I could understand the feeling though, if their GitHub got massively spammed by crypto projects.
- monkin 4y ago
  Why it's unprofessional? Many people/companies feel the same way. For example, Gergely Orosz https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/job-board-testimonials/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/job-board-testimonials/ (go to Exceptions). Maintaining a solid stance on matters you don't like isn't unprofessional. It's on the contrary.
  - Double_a_92 4y ago
    Because it's arbitrary. You just think it's a honorable thing to do because you probably also happen to support that (unrelated / political) message. But imagine a situation where you wouldn't... What if he e.g. stated that he doesn't do business with companies that actively support LGBT+ issues?
    - whorleater 4y ago
      come on dude are we really equating LGBT rights with "will answer tickets for Bitcoin users"
      - Double_a_92 4y ago
        The other blog that monkin posted had a disclaimer about not working with companies from countries that have the death penalty for being gay. So I turned that into the opposite political statement, to make a point.
- ylyn 4y ago
  Great! Don't use his library.
- 4y ago
woojoo666 4y ago
This seems....oddly political for a low-level open source technology. Reminds me of the peace-not-war controversy [1] [2]. Edit: I'm surprised at the number of people here supporting political statements in open source. I was under the assumption that most people hated the peacenotwar module, but I guess opinions are more evenly split than I thought. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacenotwar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacenotwar [2]: https://snyk.io/blog/peacenotwar-malicious-npm-node-ipc-package-vulnerability/ https://snyk.io/blog/peacenotwar-malicious-npm-node-ipc-pack...
- fock 4y ago
  it's a factual statement.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    And it's a fact that the Russian Ukraine conflict has killed many and caused untold damage on the world. Yet many people, who were against the war, still didn't want irrelevant political narrative in their npm packages, even when it almost never affected them (since it was targeting Russian IPs)
    - topranks 4y ago
      The two situations are completely different. The websockets library has not had anything malicious added to it. Only the lead dev says he won’t help certain users.
    - fock 4y ago
      how is sabotage linked to a statement of fact?
      - woojoo666 4y ago
        Well it was linked when the maintainer added the peacenotwar module
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
captn3m0 4y ago
https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js seems more popular in the crypto world.
- akx 4y ago
  I'm quite sure crypto people working in Python wouldn't use a Node.js library. Pretty apples-and-oranges there.
rvz 4y ago
> I’m aware of efforts to build proof-of-stake models. I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level. > I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. Sounds like a very extreme position. I haven't seen any creator of a deep learning library, take the extreme position of not supporting anyone who is using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by training it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centers catch fire? > You already negated all of humanity’s efforts to develop renewable energy. Please stop heating the planet where my children will have to live. I agree with the energy issues of PoW, but PoS or BFT systems do not suffer from these energy issues and the author knows it. But we are not complaining about the unavoidable wastefulness of deep learning systems or even the GPU farming and constant retraining / learning of that especially at the expense of it being used for mass surveillance? No outrage on that is there by the tech bros when there is no efficient alternative for deep learning other than using GPUs, TPUs etc to have these data centres catching fire. They are no better than the problem of PoW crypto systems today. But at least bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency and there are alternatives that are more efficient right now.
djob 4y ago
This statement is tragicomic to say the least, and quite possibly paradoxical. Facebook's data center alone uses almost as much as all bitcoin miners annually. In fact, RedHad and its server / cloud solutions are responsible for running millions of servers that consume hundreds of times more energy than bitcoin miners. Education is failing a big time
- ferran_r 4y ago
  Come on Facebook is used by billions of users...
- fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
  How are those statements possibly true? https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+annual+energy+usage https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+annual+energy+usage https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-facebook/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-fac... Facebook uses 6% the amount of power, as all bitcoin miners. The amount of power consumed by all of the cloud services we unknowingly use almost 24/7 is a hugely underappreciated problem, I will agree there. >Education is failing a big time Indeed.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    If one is deep into the Bitcoin echo chamber, one could end up believing all sorts of things about bitcoin energy usage (in very extreme cases, they believe that bitcoin is a system of energy _storage_, though it's never made quite clear _how_). This level of confusion is fairly typical.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > Facebook's data center alone uses almost as much as all bitcoin miners annually. In fact, RedHad and its server / cloud solutions are responsible for running millions of servers that consume hundreds of times more energy than bitcoin miners. Like so many bitcoin advocates, your argument relies on a unsourced statement that was deliberately invented and is not in any way close to the truth. > Education is failing a big time Arrogance and falsehoods go together in a big way.
radres 4y ago
When people are sending money through crypto (in this case bitcoin) they bid a certain amount for their transaction to be picked up. If they are paying 50 USD per transaction and people are actually booting up machines to pick up this transaction I believe I do not have anything to say to the business going between these two people. Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them? just feels childish and lacking logic
- pjc50 4y ago
  > Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? Yes and yes? We had the "should the government regulate size of cars" discussion on here just yesterday as well. As well as - including but not limited to - telling people to fly less, to insulate their homes to reduce heating energy use, to use lower energy bulbs, and so on and so on. (feeling the planet warming particularly acutely today, as the arrival of Californian weather in the UK has resulted in Californian levels of wildfires near populated areas which have never experienced them before, and the largest daily number of fire brigade calls since WW2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654 )
- hasperdi 4y ago
  It's the project owner's privilege to say this is OK, but that is NOT. (S)he doesn't have to justify it to anyone, even if whatever rule it is, is applied selectively.
- joyfylbanana 4y ago
  > If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them? > just feels childish and lacking logic Not at all, actually pretty much opposite. I think it is absolutely normal adult behaviour not to help people with their non-urgent problems unless it is a cause you deeply care about. And, it is more typical not to contribute to any kind of open source or free work kind of thing.
- rvz 4y ago
emptyparadise 4y ago
>Since websockets is released under an open-source license, you can use it for any purpose you like. However, I won’t spend any of my time to help you. >I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. It's a free country.
- bru 4y ago
  France? Indeed.
can16358p 4y ago
While he definitely has right to say anything, regardless of he is right or wrong, the language he uses is very unprofessional.
fulvioterzapi 4y ago
The vast majority of human activities have a carbon footprint. I would rather give up Facebook and all other social (which in my opinion add no value to society) rather than cryptocurrencies (which are instrumental to the right of privately transacting online, which I deem very important). This obsession over the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies is ideological and, ultimately, wrong.
- Mysterise 4y ago
  > cryptocurrencies (which are instrumental to the right of privately transacting online Blockchains are public ledgers - this is the opposite of privacy.
  - fulvioterzapi 4y ago
    There are fully anonymous cryptocurrencies. Also, in a public ledger, an address is not directly associated to a person.
    - ploppyploppy 4y ago
      There are also Layer 2 technologies
    - pjc50 4y ago
      Not immediately, no, but there's no forward secrecy, so unless users take extensive steps to obfuscate their activities, as soon as they make one transaction with a counterparty who knows who they are (such as an exchange with KYC) they are at risk of de-anonymisation.
- malka 4y ago
  > the right of privately transacting online There is no such right.
  - fulvioterzapi 4y ago
    I think there should be! And I welcome any technology enabling it!
aaa_aaa 4y ago
Some years ago, I had a similar idea for an open source library, banning use of it by government organizations (for surveillance). Later I understand how silly I was.
sph 4y ago
- fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
  If this is typical sentiment from crypto users, then the maintainer has done the right thing. I too would not like to spend my spare time and energy supporting people who can't distinguish between "oppressing minorities" and "giving away my time to demanding internet strangers". As you feel so strongly, I look forward to seeing what replacement for websockets you are able to create.
  - sph 4y ago
    I am not a crypto user nor investor. You certainly are dividing the world into us vs them and trying to fit me into a box because I dared disagree. That's exactly the intolerance I was talking about.
    - klez 4y ago
      Ok, but you're still the one who said > There is no difference to me between one that doesn't want to support crypto-related issues and one that doesn't want to support issues coming from a minority. So whether you're a crypto user/investor is quite irrelevant to the point being made. Also I didn't read it as telling you that you're a crypto user/investor, but more as a "crypto users/investors have this kind of mentality too".
    - fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
      If by "us vs them" you mean, "those of us who support the right of crypto users to demand support and software for free vs those who support people's right to choose where they invest their efforts", then I'm in the latter category. Would you have the same opinion if the maintainer announced they were going to stop working on requests originating from FB/Google/big bad mining corp/big bad animal testing corp/etc?
ploppyploppy 4y ago
Isn't cryptocurrency mining helping fueling massive demand for renewable energy infrstructure and innovation?
- secretsatan 4y ago
  There's already massive demand for renewable energy, bitcoin is just a drain on it
jknutson 4y ago
I have a pro-cryptocurrency stance. I’ve profited from it and it is responsible for a significant portion of revenue in my business, especially when working with clients unserved by the likes of PayPal and Transferwise. I remember, not so long ago at all, it felt as though my position was more or less the only position I saw reflected by others online and offline. Practically everyone I knew who had something to say about Cryptocurrency would have the same basic points— giving power back to the people, providing an alternative to the traditional (read: banks/finance industry) methods, hedge against inflation, hedge against government overreach, etc. Nowadays, it seems like popular opinion has really switched. Obviously, with just about anything, there’s going to be some negatives and some downsides. From day one with Cryptocurrency, for example, the most obvious use case was for criminal activity and moving value outside the prying eyes of whatever 3-letter agencies that are applicable in your jurisdictions. I understood that counterpoint to Cryptocurrency just fine. I agreed with it, as well. Criminals do use Cryptocurrency, it’s just a fact— it’s explosion in popularity has certainly opened up and/or made more reliable and easily available many new revenue models for the seedier folks amongst us. Ransomware, for example, has greatly benefited from Cryptocurrency’s creation and gradually increased adoption into the mainstream. Bringing me to my point, or I suppose question, rather, is the argument that Cryptocurrency uses a ton of energy and is bad for the planet. While this is also true, especially for proof of work stuff like Bitcoin and Ethereum, it feels like whenever I hear discussion of Cryptocurrency using this argument, there’s often little to no genuine conversation being made about how to improve upon it. I’m sure all of us know about other transaction verification methods that don’t eat nearly as much energy, so I’m not going to dive into that now. To state my opinion bluntly, it feels like the whole energy / electricity usage argument of Cryptocurrency has came about rather abruptly and inorganically. I don’t remember hardly anyone talking about this issue with nearly as much (seemingly blind) passion or negative attitude in, say, 2013-2020~. Furthermore, while yes— the energy usage of cryptocurrency is a problem, and a damn near inherent problem at that— it seems to me like it’s such a minor drawback comparatively speaking to the other evils in the world. 14 trees burn in the Amazon Rainforest every second. A kid dies in Africa from starvation or malaria every 15 seconds. Oil companies cover up their emissions and pay for favourable regulations that allow them to continue to pollute at industrial scale with little to no pushback. I am no tinfoil hat wearing cryptobro, don’t get me wrong, but considering how little pollution cryptocurrency produces comparatively speaking to $insert_megacorp_here, and how weak of a logical counterpoint that seems to be against the inherent positives of cryptocurrency, it seems to me like this argument is one that is almost wholeheartedly emotional in nature and one where I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots of it were astroturfed by a select few who did not want to see crypto succeed. As an analogy, certainly we all remember the marketing BP put in to the “reduce your carbon footprint; *we ALL have to do our part* to reduce global warming” slogan thing they got going. Meanwhilst, they were spitting out pollution at rates that even if every single one of us lived like Taoist monks still wouldn’t have made a dent in. Am I the only one that thinks this way? I would love to be proven wrong if there’s any counterpoints to my perspective that I could be made aware of. /rant
xeddit 4y ago
[flagged]

99 points by Doches 4y ago

almost 4y ago
For fucks sake you're not a repressed minority and not everything is conspiracy against you and your magic internet scam machine.
bananadonkey 4y ago
Speaking of full disclosure, how much crypto do you hold (a stake in)?
the_gipsy 4y ago
The motivation does not necessarily invalidate the claims.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Right. What invalidate the claims is him being "aware of the effort to build proof-of-stake models", because they are already exist.
  - gebruikersnaam 4y ago
    They might exist, but for now the proof-of-work coins still consume unhealthy amounts of energy. It's rather pointless to point out that other things exist besides the thing being criticized. "Murder is bad". "Yes, but food sharing exists".
    - soco 4y ago
      In this case the metaphor would rather be: "Murder is bad". "Yes but efforts to educate the population exist"
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Nonsense. The point is that he is putting PoW and all other types of blockchain systems on the same bag. If his criticism was specific to Bitcoin (or other popular PoW-based systems), then it would hold. But when he acknowledges alternatives and make it sound that they don't exist yet, then it is dishonest.
      - pritambaral 4y ago
        I mean, as he says in his next line, "I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level.", it's clear he cares about it all on only one axis: "total energy consumption". PoS's mere existence doesn't affect that axis. I can complaign[1] about how polluting power plants are, knowing full well there exist nuclear power plants, and it wouldn't make me a hypocrite. Sth else might, but not this. 1: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Complaign https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Complaign
        rglullis 4y ago
        > "total energy consumption". Which is a bullshit criteria. It is like saying that you are not going to support electric cars until there exists no combustion engine and you are concern about emissions. If you are against cars as a whole, then state so, but don't use one subclass of them as prejudice against all of them.
        TomSwirly 4y ago
        Cars are a useful form of transportation. Hundreds of millions of people use one every day. Crypto has been around almost as long as the smartphone and so far the only applications which have emerged are crime and wild speculation. After fourteen years, any rational person should be pretty skeptical that any application that isn't "evading regulations" or speculation will ever appear.
        WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
        You wish. Just look at some hot heads still thinking communism is a good idea.
pavlov 4y ago
The past twelve years of cryptocurrencies is clear evidence that we can have open source permissionless infrastructure that’s utterly inadequate to support actual banking transactions on a global scale, or we can have centralized architectures that pretend to be permissionless and decentralized through a series of shell games and vague lies thus delivering the worst imaginable hybrid of banking and multi-level marketing. Faced with these choices, the status quo isn’t so bad after all. The other day I saw a news report that Wise (formerly Transferwise) does over $100 billion in money transfer volume annually. A classic startup seems to have been able to fix the problem of expensive international transfers much better than crypto-anything.
- jcbrand 4y ago
  People love to talk as if the current situation is frozen in time, particularly when it comes to open source software. I've seen people complain about certain open source software based on their experience in 2016, as if nothing might have changed in the intervening years. There is continuous work being done on scaling. Things take time. We didn't have broadband internet immediately, there was a very long period of dialup, then slow DSL, ADSL and then eventually fast broadband. There was no way you could stream video on the early Internet. I wonder whether people back then also complained that it will never be able to replace television, actually... I'm pretty sure those people existed.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    It has been almost 15 to 20 years of Bitcoin and it is still very slow for payments. The supposed lightning network tends to centralisation inevitably which defeats the purpose of Bitcoin being decentralised. All the while the current system has been working very well.
    - jcbrand 4y ago
      Bitcoin is 13 years old. Dialup internet was used for more than 20 years.
adave 4y ago
that's nice of him, i would have blocked all y'all electricity mooching mfrs to hell.
- Quindecillion 4y ago
  If Bitcoin miners are paying for or producing the electricity themselves, what's the problem? But that's not really the point though is it? Electricity use is not the problem. Carbon emissions are. If renewables are competitive with fossil fuels (hint: they are), and profit-driven Bitcoin miners are incentivized to seek out the cheapest sources of energy, then Bitcoin mining should be one of the "greenest" industries on the planet. Guess what? It already is greener than many other industries, with close to 60% of it's energy coming from renewable sources AND on top of that there are lots of operations popping up to capture and burn flared gas (i.e. methane, which is a far worse GHG than CO2). https://medium.com/@magusperivallon/a-financial-hail-mary-for-the-climate-an-argument-for-bitcoin-adoption-1a695b668529 https://medium.com/@magusperivallon/a-financial-hail-mary-fo...
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Is it greener because (as you said) Bitcoin mining with renewable energy is more profitable, and therefore they prevent other users of electricity from decreasing their carbon emissions?
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    > with close to 60% of it's energy coming from renewable sources Only 30% of the world's electricity comes from renewables, so your claim seems really far-fetched. Your link does not mention the word "renewable" at all. Indeed, it seems barely related to your argument and wildly discursive. Citation for your wildly unbelievable claim? And if I sound angry, I am - every single Bitcoin advocate seems to think nothing of just making up facts whenever they please. It's appalling and unethical.
ignoramous 4y ago
> ...open source permissionless banking infrastructure I sincerely hope cryptocurrency delivers on its promises, but right now, there are too many ponzi schems, pyramid schemes, pump and dump schemes, fraud funds, fragile funds (all riding the hype train) to really make a case for it. Someday, perhaps? Until then (and regardless of one's affiliations), the stance that due to the resources cryptocurrency drains, it is best avoided or even boycotted, sounds reasonable to me.
- Quindecillion 4y ago
  Bitcoin delivers on those promises and is working now. All other cryptos are some variation of those scams you mentioned. It's worth taking the time to understand why Bitcoin is different.
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    No it isn't. Bitcoin is a crypto/cryptocurrency. They are all the same.
nuclearnice1 4y ago
You’re welcome to point out the conflict, but please drop the snark: “But of course that is not relevant to the discussion, because crypto users are evil vampires sucking away the life force of the world.”
colesantiago 4y ago
So what? The bank / payment services company the author works at isn't building a distributed pyramid scheme where people lose their money.
shaky-carrousel 4y ago
arcticbull 4y ago
Ah there it is, the ad hominem attacks on anyone you disagree with. Wouldn’t be a crypto post without it. [edit] so we can move forward let me make this easier for you. I echo and restate and agree with everything they said and I have zero economic incentive one way or the other to say that.
fock 4y ago
https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blame/d8a436fc0eec66e6e9c4b4631124c0039ae63a25/docs/project/contributing.rst https://github.com/aaugustin/websockets/blame/d8a436fc0eec66... a quick look on his linkedin will tell you that that paragraph is there for a bit longer than he is working at Qonto. I guess you could tell us about your conflict of interest? Crypto users are either stupid (and future bag-holders), criminal (well, some people get rich) or naive (probably a lot of contributors...).
sakarisson 4y ago
Regardless of anything else, it's completely within the rights of an open-source maintainer to pick and choose which users they want to dedicate time to help. The license doesn't forbid anyone to use the software, so cryptocurrency companies are still able to benefit from the library.
Planktonne 4y ago
> Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure In theory, sure, but I'm not sure this has been demonstrated as in any way a practical/immediate concern that would influence the maintainer's views.
throwaway0asd 4y ago
> But of course that is not relevant to the discussion, because crypto users are evil vampires sucking away the life force of the world. Not mutually exclusive. Crypto is a digital evil with no observable practical value, which reminds me of child-pornography.
korijn 4y ago
Why does it matter which is worse? You can't eat money.
brainwipe 4y ago
Not relevant because crypto isn't a threat to fiat banks any more than fiat currencies are a threat to crypto. It will remain that way until large scale human effort and day-to-day expenditure is directly payable by crypto. That's a long way off.
api 4y ago
> Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. That will be true as soon as people start using cryptocurrency for something other than gambling on its value in traditional fiat currency going up or scams.
fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
>Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. The only thing threatened by such things is the amount of time and money that devotees pour into them.
closewith 4y ago
You’re right - his motivation isn’t relevant. He’s under no obligation to support anyone.
paulhodge 4y ago
It’s not a ‘gotcha’ to point out that someone’s profession is aligned with their principles.
WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
> A bank / payment services company. Their existence is threatened by crypto adoption and open source permissionless banking infrastructure. I've heard this one before, but it was about "retail chains being threatened by the vastly superior multi-level marketing".

bkm 4y ago

Not a cryptophobe, but his rule seems reasonable: 'use it, but you won't get support if you use it for things I don't like'. Certainly better than the 'you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x' emerging trend in 'OSS' README's.

samthecoy 4y ago
Could you give some examples of this trend? (Not aware of it, personally—curious to see an example)
- rvz 4y ago
  I haven't seen any example of such a trend which is why this is a very extreme position if not an irrational position to take. > I’m aware of efforts to build proof-of-stake models. I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level. > I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so. It's business as usual for them as the author is getting upset over PoW systems to taint all of them under the same brush despite many alternatives that are more energy efficient than others.
  - kaibee 4y ago
    > Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by using their deep learning library to train it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centres catch fire? I don't think so. I believe the original creator of YOLO actually quit for that reason.
  - grnmamba 4y ago
    > Have we seen any creator of a deep learning library, take a similar position if not stopping any support for anyone using it for mass surveillance? ml5.js license: > This license gives everyone as much permission to work with this software as possible as long as they comply with the ml5.js Code of Conduct [...] ml5.js code of conduct: > Do not: [...] Use ml5.js to build tools of mass surveillance and prediction to repress the rights of people https://github.com/ml5js/ml5-library/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/ml5js/ml5-library/blob/main/LICENSE.md Not sure how enforcable this is but it exists.

Double_a_92 4y ago

While he is right, this still feels somewhat unprofessional. It's some arbitrary rant about something that he doesn't like, appended at the end of the contributing guide. I could understand the feeling though, if their GitHub got massively spammed by crypto projects.

monkin 4y ago
Why it's unprofessional? Many people/companies feel the same way. For example, Gergely Orosz https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/job-board-testimonials/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/job-board-testimonials/ (go to Exceptions). Maintaining a solid stance on matters you don't like isn't unprofessional. It's on the contrary.
- Double_a_92 4y ago
  Because it's arbitrary. You just think it's a honorable thing to do because you probably also happen to support that (unrelated / political) message. But imagine a situation where you wouldn't... What if he e.g. stated that he doesn't do business with companies that actively support LGBT+ issues?
  - whorleater 4y ago
    come on dude are we really equating LGBT rights with "will answer tickets for Bitcoin users"
    - Double_a_92 4y ago
      The other blog that monkin posted had a disclaimer about not working with companies from countries that have the death penalty for being gay. So I turned that into the opposite political statement, to make a point.
ylyn 4y ago
Great! Don't use his library.
4y ago

woojoo666 4y ago

This seems....oddly political for a low-level open source technology. Reminds me of the peace-not-war controversy [1] [2]. Edit: I'm surprised at the number of people here supporting political statements in open source. I was under the assumption that most people hated the peacenotwar module, but I guess opinions are more evenly split than I thought. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacenotwar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacenotwar [2]: https://snyk.io/blog/peacenotwar-malicious-npm-node-ipc-package-vulnerability/ https://snyk.io/blog/peacenotwar-malicious-npm-node-ipc-pack...

fock 4y ago
it's a factual statement.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  And it's a fact that the Russian Ukraine conflict has killed many and caused untold damage on the world. Yet many people, who were against the war, still didn't want irrelevant political narrative in their npm packages, even when it almost never affected them (since it was targeting Russian IPs)
  - topranks 4y ago
    The two situations are completely different. The websockets library has not had anything malicious added to it. Only the lead dev says he won’t help certain users.
  - fock 4y ago
    how is sabotage linked to a statement of fact?
    - woojoo666 4y ago
      Well it was linked when the maintainer added the peacenotwar module
FartyMcFarter 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

captn3m0 4y ago

https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js seems more popular in the crypto world.

akx 4y ago
I'm quite sure crypto people working in Python wouldn't use a Node.js library. Pretty apples-and-oranges there.

rvz 4y ago

> I’m aware of efforts to build proof-of-stake models. I’ll care once the total energy consumption of all cryptocurrencies drops to a non-bullshit level. > I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. Sounds like a very extreme position. I haven't seen any creator of a deep learning library, take the extreme position of not supporting anyone who is using it for mass surveillance or burning up the planet by training it on tons of GPUs in the cloud until the data centers catch fire? > You already negated all of humanity’s efforts to develop renewable energy. Please stop heating the planet where my children will have to live. I agree with the energy issues of PoW, but PoS or BFT systems do not suffer from these energy issues and the author knows it. But we are not complaining about the unavoidable wastefulness of deep learning systems or even the GPU farming and constant retraining / learning of that especially at the expense of it being used for mass surveillance? No outrage on that is there by the tech bros when there is no efficient alternative for deep learning other than using GPUs, TPUs etc to have these data centres catching fire. They are no better than the problem of PoW crypto systems today. But at least bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency and there are alternatives that are more efficient right now.

djob 4y ago

This statement is tragicomic to say the least, and quite possibly paradoxical. Facebook's data center alone uses almost as much as all bitcoin miners annually. In fact, RedHad and its server / cloud solutions are responsible for running millions of servers that consume hundreds of times more energy than bitcoin miners. Education is failing a big time

ferran_r 4y ago
Come on Facebook is used by billions of users...
fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
How are those statements possibly true? https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+annual+energy+usage https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+annual+energy+usage https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-facebook/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-fac... Facebook uses 6% the amount of power, as all bitcoin miners. The amount of power consumed by all of the cloud services we unknowingly use almost 24/7 is a hugely underappreciated problem, I will agree there. >Education is failing a big time Indeed.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  If one is deep into the Bitcoin echo chamber, one could end up believing all sorts of things about bitcoin energy usage (in very extreme cases, they believe that bitcoin is a system of energy _storage_, though it's never made quite clear _how_). This level of confusion is fairly typical.
TomSwirly 4y ago
> Facebook's data center alone uses almost as much as all bitcoin miners annually. In fact, RedHad and its server / cloud solutions are responsible for running millions of servers that consume hundreds of times more energy than bitcoin miners. Like so many bitcoin advocates, your argument relies on a unsourced statement that was deliberately invented and is not in any way close to the truth. > Education is failing a big time Arrogance and falsehoods go together in a big way.

radres 4y ago

When people are sending money through crypto (in this case bitcoin) they bid a certain amount for their transaction to be picked up. If they are paying 50 USD per transaction and people are actually booting up machines to pick up this transaction I believe I do not have anything to say to the business going between these two people. Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them? just feels childish and lacking logic

pjc50 4y ago
> Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? Yes and yes? We had the "should the government regulate size of cars" discussion on here just yesterday as well. As well as - including but not limited to - telling people to fly less, to insulate their homes to reduce heating energy use, to use lower energy bulbs, and so on and so on. (feeling the planet warming particularly acutely today, as the arrival of Californian weather in the UK has resulted in Californian levels of wildfires near populated areas which have never experienced them before, and the largest daily number of fire brigade calls since WW2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654 )
hasperdi 4y ago
It's the project owner's privilege to say this is OK, but that is NOT. (S)he doesn't have to justify it to anyone, even if whatever rule it is, is applied selectively.
joyfylbanana 4y ago
> If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them? > just feels childish and lacking logic Not at all, actually pretty much opposite. I think it is absolutely normal adult behaviour not to help people with their non-urgent problems unless it is a cause you deeply care about. And, it is more typical not to contribute to any kind of open source or free work kind of thing.
rvz 4y ago

emptyparadise 4y ago

>Since websockets is released under an open-source license, you can use it for any purpose you like. However, I won’t spend any of my time to help you. >I will summarily close issues related to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any way. It's a free country.

bru 4y ago
France? Indeed.

can16358p 4y ago

While he definitely has right to say anything, regardless of he is right or wrong, the language he uses is very unprofessional.

fulvioterzapi 4y ago

The vast majority of human activities have a carbon footprint. I would rather give up Facebook and all other social (which in my opinion add no value to society) rather than cryptocurrencies (which are instrumental to the right of privately transacting online, which I deem very important). This obsession over the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies is ideological and, ultimately, wrong.

Mysterise 4y ago
> cryptocurrencies (which are instrumental to the right of privately transacting online Blockchains are public ledgers - this is the opposite of privacy.
- fulvioterzapi 4y ago
  There are fully anonymous cryptocurrencies. Also, in a public ledger, an address is not directly associated to a person.
  - ploppyploppy 4y ago
    There are also Layer 2 technologies
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Not immediately, no, but there's no forward secrecy, so unless users take extensive steps to obfuscate their activities, as soon as they make one transaction with a counterparty who knows who they are (such as an exchange with KYC) they are at risk of de-anonymisation.
malka 4y ago
> the right of privately transacting online There is no such right.
- fulvioterzapi 4y ago
  I think there should be! And I welcome any technology enabling it!

aaa_aaa 4y ago

Some years ago, I had a similar idea for an open source library, banning use of it by government organizations (for surveillance). Later I understand how silly I was.

sph 4y ago

fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
If this is typical sentiment from crypto users, then the maintainer has done the right thing. I too would not like to spend my spare time and energy supporting people who can't distinguish between "oppressing minorities" and "giving away my time to demanding internet strangers". As you feel so strongly, I look forward to seeing what replacement for websockets you are able to create.
- sph 4y ago
  I am not a crypto user nor investor. You certainly are dividing the world into us vs them and trying to fit me into a box because I dared disagree. That's exactly the intolerance I was talking about.
  - klez 4y ago
    Ok, but you're still the one who said > There is no difference to me between one that doesn't want to support crypto-related issues and one that doesn't want to support issues coming from a minority. So whether you're a crypto user/investor is quite irrelevant to the point being made. Also I didn't read it as telling you that you're a crypto user/investor, but more as a "crypto users/investors have this kind of mentality too".
  - fdsafdsfdsa 4y ago
    If by "us vs them" you mean, "those of us who support the right of crypto users to demand support and software for free vs those who support people's right to choose where they invest their efforts", then I'm in the latter category. Would you have the same opinion if the maintainer announced they were going to stop working on requests originating from FB/Google/big bad mining corp/big bad animal testing corp/etc?

ploppyploppy 4y ago

Isn't cryptocurrency mining helping fueling massive demand for renewable energy infrstructure and innovation?

secretsatan 4y ago
There's already massive demand for renewable energy, bitcoin is just a drain on it

jknutson 4y ago

I have a pro-cryptocurrency stance. I’ve profited from it and it is responsible for a significant portion of revenue in my business, especially when working with clients unserved by the likes of PayPal and Transferwise. I remember, not so long ago at all, it felt as though my position was more or less the only position I saw reflected by others online and offline. Practically everyone I knew who had something to say about Cryptocurrency would have the same basic points— giving power back to the people, providing an alternative to the traditional (read: banks/finance industry) methods, hedge against inflation, hedge against government overreach, etc. Nowadays, it seems like popular opinion has really switched. Obviously, with just about anything, there’s going to be some negatives and some downsides. From day one with Cryptocurrency, for example, the most obvious use case was for criminal activity and moving value outside the prying eyes of whatever 3-letter agencies that are applicable in your jurisdictions. I understood that counterpoint to Cryptocurrency just fine. I agreed with it, as well. Criminals do use Cryptocurrency, it’s just a fact— it’s explosion in popularity has certainly opened up and/or made more reliable and easily available many new revenue models for the seedier folks amongst us. Ransomware, for example, has greatly benefited from Cryptocurrency’s creation and gradually increased adoption into the mainstream. Bringing me to my point, or I suppose question, rather, is the argument that Cryptocurrency uses a ton of energy and is bad for the planet. While this is also true, especially for proof of work stuff like Bitcoin and Ethereum, it feels like whenever I hear discussion of Cryptocurrency using this argument, there’s often little to no genuine conversation being made about how to improve upon it. I’m sure all of us know about other transaction verification methods that don’t eat nearly as much energy, so I’m not going to dive into that now. To state my opinion bluntly, it feels like the whole energy / electricity usage argument of Cryptocurrency has came about rather abruptly and inorganically. I don’t remember hardly anyone talking about this issue with nearly as much (seemingly blind) passion or negative attitude in, say, 2013-2020~. Furthermore, while yes— the energy usage of cryptocurrency is a problem, and a damn near inherent problem at that— it seems to me like it’s such a minor drawback comparatively speaking to the other evils in the world. 14 trees burn in the Amazon Rainforest every second. A kid dies in Africa from starvation or malaria every 15 seconds. Oil companies cover up their emissions and pay for favourable regulations that allow them to continue to pollute at industrial scale with little to no pushback. I am no tinfoil hat wearing cryptobro, don’t get me wrong, but considering how little pollution cryptocurrency produces comparatively speaking to $insert_megacorp_here, and how weak of a logical counterpoint that seems to be against the inherent positives of cryptocurrency, it seems to me like this argument is one that is almost wholeheartedly emotional in nature and one where I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots of it were astroturfed by a select few who did not want to see crypto succeed. As an analogy, certainly we all remember the marketing BP put in to the “reduce your carbon footprint; *we ALL have to do our part* to reduce global warming” slogan thing they got going. Meanwhilst, they were spitting out pollution at rates that even if every single one of us lived like Taoist monks still wouldn’t have made a dent in. Am I the only one that thinks this way? I would love to be proven wrong if there’s any counterpoints to my perspective that I could be made aware of. /rant

xeddit 4y ago

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