You don't seem to understand what "arranging" is, though.
You can't arrange something that doesn't exist. That would be writing.
The people covering the song are making an arrangement. They have to, because of the issues I talked about regarding some of the parts not even being written down. So they make an arrangement that sounds similar.
That's clearly not what I was talking about.
All I'm saying is Lennon/McCartney songs doesn't have Ringo as a songwriter even though he arranged all the drum parts.
Same with Octopuses Garden only has Ringo as the songwriter even though the entire band arranged the instrumental parts.
Almost all the famous and popular rocks songs on a "classic rock" station were written by the same songwriters that wrote the music on the "top 40" station.
And they were written by committee.
Even most of the songs written by the band members were written by committee, with one person starting from a theme or hook, and somebody else adding the other side of that, and then another person writing some of the parts. And then somebody else writes lyrics. Or, they start from the lyrics and they ask for changes as they figure out what fits with the music.
If there is only one songwriter listed, it often means they wrote the lyrics, chorus, and theme, and the other band members had to basically make up something to play along, but don't get credited.
It is actually maybe only in the least imaginative pop music where there is a single songwriter, outside of classical composition anyways.
If you watch a concert video of Miles Davis and pay attention to the interactions between the musicians you can see they're writing the music by committee in realtime.
Most exceptions are cases like Jonathan Richman, and the only reason it works is because he's a solo act. Sometimes with a percussionist, but they're just following. His famous early songs like Roadrunner that get covered were written for a full band, and the band members contributed a lot of the writing for the individual parts.
Look at what was actually "written" for a song that was "written" by one person; it is often something that requires 5 musicians to play, but only lyrics and rhythm guitar parts might have even been formally planned. But when another band covers the song, they're also copying much of what the other musicians played, not just what was "written." So it ends up being very misleading, and lots of bands the members sue each other over who really wrote what. That they don't agree even who wrote a song says a lot about the process, and how much of it was by committee!
Songwriting doesn't include arranging.
That's like including the camera-man, makeup, costume designer to the actors performance. Or an actor's performance to the script writer.
Real innovation involves changing paradigms, and every definition of "best people" is based on the mastery of those people based on existing paradigms. There is only a partial exemption for people who become famous for creating new paradigms to solve important problems, but they were NOT recognized as "best" until AFTERWARDS. More often, they spend most of their lives fighting against the old paradigms. (Any better sources than The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn? It's a classic, but old.)
Anecdotal evidence, but I spent many years supporting a highly prestigious research lab, and I didn't see much that I would regard as real innovation. Mostly a stream of minor refinements hammered into patents with the support of skilled lawyers and even though most of them should have failed on the obviousness test. I do NOT think it was a cultural thing, though I should acknowledge (and disclaim?) that the lab I supported was located in a country with a reputation for copying and improving rather than innovating...
Trivial example of a useful innovation that no one has apparently thought of yet: Why isn't there any Android app to turn off the sound for a period of time or on a regular schedule? At least I haven't been able to find one. I already know the answer as regards that research lab: Not likely to generate a patent.
True innovation and success is a random search. So many things have to line up exactly at the right time at the right place.
Humans want to see patterns and find them. Most of them fail statistical tests.
A few rules are true but there are so many false ones our there.
Every time I hear a professor, boss, etc. start talking "team assignment," I know its just a polite way of having the strong students/employees carry the weak ones. Instead of some people getting A's and some getting F's, everyone gets a C. Kurt Vonnegut would be proud.
And that is why most open source projects and github projects have only one contributor.
Actually, the plenty of alt-coins is part of the problem. Just how many currencies do you expect to carry, or alternatively expect the corner store to be willing to deal in?
If you're willing to trust a central authority anyway, are you sure you'd rather trust one with a five or less year track record over one that's 200 years old?
A lot of places have something like an auto exchange feature anyway. You can choose what to pay in and the seller can choose what to get their payment in. Just some exchange will do the change.
It still has the problem of being delayed but for online transactions it works OK.
That is today's profitability. You can't project that into the future. More realistic profitability calculators factor in difficulty increases.
Also power costs seem off. $0.15 looks more like baseline residential pricing. GPU mining will likely blow way past baseline and into the next higher tier of pricing. As I mentioned earlier you need to make sure comparisons are using beyond baseline pricing.
If coin prices decline, difficulty decreases and if coin prices rise, difficulty increases. I think they balance themselves out.
No. More miners (more hashing power technically) more difficulty. Less miners less difficulty. More people joining the mining scene increases difficulty regardless of what price is doing.
Plus, there are automated pool that will mine the most profitable coin and auto-exchange it to your preferred coin.
Not a "plus", that is what your profitability link above assumes, constant switching to the more profitable algorithms as alt-coin enthusiasts bid for your hashing power.
Who know what will happen. From the past it looks like 3 month ROI is plausible. It has been better before and it has been worse but just an average of 3 months.
The past is what I described in scenario (2) earlier. That was actual data since the summer, mildly rounded for convenience. Those nicehash estimates do not project out as you assume. Plus they understate costs since they only factor the GPU power requirements. As I mentioned earlier you have to use a watt meter and measure what the entire computer is consuming when it is hashing.
I totally agree with you that investing has been far more profitable than mining. If you just want to get a sweet GPU or system paid for my mining in about 3 months without a lot of work, it looks to be possible. Mining rigs or cypto investing is almost a part time job since you have to keep on top of so many things and maybe not the best use of your time.
Even if pays for itself in 6 months, it's still a good deal. Most stores will give you a 0% APR for 6 month loan for buying over $500.
If you want the GPU for non-mining purposes, sure, mine to subsidize the purchase. Why leave the system off/sleeping if mining is profitable? Maybe go up a model and get a slightly more expensive card, scenario (1) earlier. I'm just arguing that if the only reason for the GPU is mining things need to be viewed differently, a delay to purchase possibly warranted depending on what coin price expectations are.
Mining paid for my 1070 and AMD cards. I bought two 1080 Ti and one of them is paid off. The other will be paid off in a month and half more.
It has worked for me since I started. Profitability actually seems to be going up rather than down nowadays. Perhaps Volta release will change that but my cards will be all paid off by then and I should have a little bit extra to go for the top of the line Volta.
The big argument for Bitcoin retaining any value was it's usefulness and eventual use as a daily means of exchanging value. Taking a week for a transaction to clear and stratospheric transaction costs negate that future use. Even a conference for Bitcoin isn't accepting bitcoin now!
Nobody is going to accept transaction costs of more than a few percent for small transactions and nobody is going to sell anything more expensive than a cup of coffee without using an escrow and waiting until the transfer to that escrow clears before they hand over the product or service. That pretty much kills it as a means of value exchange except as a last resort.
The final nail in the coffin, it is just as traceable as a credit card or bank transfer. The people who touted it as being as anonymous as cash have been proven wrong.
Given that, what is the new theory for it retaining any value at all? It IS a fiat currency. The bit of digital data and the whole blockchain carry no intrinsic value outside of the value exchange, just like any fiat currency. If that bit of data represents anything at all, it represents the burned coal that produced the power to run the mining machine. How valuable do you suppose already burned coal is?
Like most modern financial instruments, when the music stops, a very few will make some money and a bunch of people will find no chair.
There are plenty of alt-coins that have solved those problems and even bitcoin with their lightning system is looking to solve it.
Plus, bitcoin transactions doesn't have to be on the chain for coffee. Coinbase does free instant bitcoin transfers but you have to trust a central authority. There is the lightning network that reduces the blockchain dependence.
Bitcoin never ever said it was anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your slashdot user name is a psuedonymn but I can infer your real identity from it. It is the same for bitcoin. There are alt-coins that are completely anonymous.
Speaking of coal, someone compared bitcoin to mined diamonds. Instead of carrying all your wealth in a tiny bag, you'll have it in the secret key for your wallet.
Bitcoin's explosive growth is over. It will just retain value against inflation from now on. It could also pop and be over, but I think something like that is as equally likely as another spurt that will make bitcoin worth $100,000 a coin.
Bitcoin's influence could change how governments, finance and economies work. Unlike beanie babies and tulips, it doesn't seem to as worthless.
...as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs....
His manifesto did not question the benefits of the diversity program. It questioned its fficacy -- in other words, he questioned if Google could achieve more diversity by structuring the program differently.
And that's a very big difference. I really hate the level of journalism being thrown at this topic, here and everywhere else.
He was not fired for his manifesto.
He was fired for being disruptive to his co-workers.
Unless all his co-workers were conservative white male, his belief that he was superior (or more ideal or more suitable) engineer than his colleagues was disruptive. How would a colleague of different gender or race work with him?
Would you consider giving him a leadership position in a team with those beliefs? Would you trust him with any sort of power over others?
If coin prices decline, difficulty decreases and if coin prices rise, difficulty increases. I think they balance themselves out.
Plus, there are automated pool that will mine the most profitable coin and auto-exchange it to your preferred coin.
Who know what will happen. From the past it looks like 3 month ROI is plausible. It has been better before and it has been worse but just an average of 3 months.
I totally agree with you that investing has been far more profitable than mining. If you just want to get a sweet GPU or system paid for my mining in about 3 months without a lot of work, it looks to be possible. Mining rigs or cypto investing is almost a part time job since you have to keep on top of so many things and maybe not the best use of your time.
Even if pays for itself in 6 months, it's still a good deal. Most stores will give you a 0% APR for 6 month loan for buying over $500.
If you want to get in on the cryptocurrency mining scene...
Stop yourself, don't do it. Take either of these two paths:
(1) You were going to buy a GPU anyway for some non-mining reason. Go ahead, buy the GPU. Maybe, **maybe**, buy a model up one level of performance/price from what you would have otherwise bought, if its a low to midrange model. Say if you were otherwise planning on a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ***maybe*** get a GTX 1060 6GB, ****maybe****. If you were otherwise getting a high performer, say a 1070 Ti for that 4K monitor, do *****not***** go up a level to a 1080 Ti. Then let the GPU mine when you are not using the machine. Use a watt meter to determine the total power consumption of your machine to determine power usage, do *not* trust online references that say your GPU uses so many watts. When your GPU is mining other parts of the computer are also drawing power, especially the CPU which may also be mining. You want to know the total system power and make sure your mining proceeds exceed that amount. Be sure to use above baseline residential power rates in your calculations, do *not* just look at your current bill and expect the current rate. If it is not profitable to mine do *not* fall into the trap that "the coin price will eventually rise and make it profitable", that is a losing game. Instead, take whatever money you would spend on power and just buy the coins directly, you will have more coins that way if the price rises. But above all else, do not get into the mindset of joining the mining scene, that is a path to losing money. Stay in the scene "the GPU I have anyway can make some coin when I'm not using it".
(2) Take whatever money you were willing to spend on a GPU for mining and just buy coins with that money. You will likely do better that way if the price rises. Many miners fall into the trap that they are profitable and pat themselves on the back. They do not consider the opportunity cost of the alternative of just buying coins directly. The following are very rough estimates but the point will nonetheless be clear. Lets say you spent $500 on a GPU last summer and another $500 on a GPU last fall. At above baseline residential power rates maybe you have about an extra $1,000 after factoring in power. Congrats your GPUs are now paid. However your friend bought $500 worth of bitcoin in the summer and another $500 in the fall and now has $3,000 worth of bitcoin. You are at net $0, he is at net $2,0000. If you are willing to gamble on increasing coin prices you may be better off just buying coins directly. Things are not as simple as a mining rig being profitable, the opportunity cost of the just buy directly must be considered. Many other things must also be considered before joining the mining scene.
Buy a dual 1080 Ti. Stick it your computer and it will pay for itself in 3 months. You can also game on it once in a while.
Investing a little in crypto is silly because even if things go really well, you get a little bit. Most of the benefits goes to the early investors or big fishes. You'll just spend all this time and energy figuring out the snakepit that is crypto trading for minute amounts of gain.
Go big or just go enough to pay for your Ryzen 7 and 1080 Tis.
Do people use Bitcoin to complete transactions for material goods or has Bitcoin become an investment vehicle?? I.e. What percentage of Bitcoin transactions pay for pizza (or Teslas or houses) and what percentage are people saying "I'll just buy low and sell high and make a killing like everyone else". I assume there's no way to look at the blockchain and determine this... that would pretty much kill the idea of anonymity.
It's more a reference system right now.
You can have smaller centralized systems like coinbase where you can do fee-less, instant transactions but it's not on the blockchain. However, the conversion from fiat to BTC is done with reference to the exchange systems.
When all these companies talk about AI, what they really mean is a way to provide back-end servers, neural net chips, GPUS and such so that they can charge for the deep learning systems that everyone wants to use to process the data to find those little nuggets. They are not working on building general AI systems or even working on how to architecture one. They want to make money and the money is in the service. Just like Amazon, Google and IBM. Facebook uses AI and provide some services. But the future where you need fast real-time detection of things that your automated cars and planes will be doing, where it sends all that to a massive computer to do the processing and sends the results back is what they are talking about (at least in these last few and next 5 years).
The AI systems, based on neural nets as still so simple compared to what humans can do, it will be a little while before real general AI gets around. And the Robotic technology and hardware to house it is so far behind the software at this point.
It will all come, bio-robotics, Bio-AI, might be here first.
You can't stop technology and you won't stop developing AI systems, we learn more and more each month, but there are still a lot of unsolved hard AI problems and formalizing all that is even harder.
the drugs that kept a family member of mine alive were made in Europe at public Universities. Most drugs are (and then they're packaged up my big Pharma into profits). The computer I'm typing on wouldn't exist without massive public spending.
We're cutting all this back so we can give more and more money to the elites. Let's stop that. I get it, everybody's afraid of tax raises because even at $250k/yr a lot of us are paycheck to paycheck (60-80% depending on how you run the numbers). But here's a crazy idea: We can raise taxes on the wealthy elite without raising taxes on the workers? I know, crazy right? All it takes is to stop voting for your friendly neighborhood right winger. Oh, and make sure you show up at your Primaries so they don't sneak an economic right winger in because they're socially left wing.
Living paycheck to paycheck on 250k/yr? How do you even spend roughly $500-$600/day, 20K/month on?
I switched careers to something completely unrelated at 30-ish. After about 8 years, I felt like I was just fixing the same problems over and over again, and I wanted a bigger challenge.
This is a huge problem with software engineering jobs I've seen. The only way to do something different is to quit your job and start somewhere else.
With accounting or other professions, there is a very clear defined role from junior work to senior work.
With software, the more knowledge you have of the system, the more valuable you become exactly where you are.
Early fifties here. Been in the industry for (oh gosh) almost 30 years now, 26 at the same company. I burned out on programming after Year 19 at said company, and moved on to being an engineering manager, running a team of software developers. What I've discovered is that while I do miss the pure programming (a bit), I don't miss the grind. I've also discovered I have a talent for spotting talent, hiring and mentoring young engineers and turning them into seasoned engineers.
I hope to retire by the time I'm 60. Between a 401k, some real estate, and some Bitcoin holdings that have done remarkably well, it'll probably happen. A job candidate I was interviewing once asked me "what advice might you have for a young engineer just entering the industry"? I gave him an answer he wasn't expecting.
"Max out your 401k as soon as humanly possible".
I was doing retirement calculations and it seems engineers should have no problem retiring in their 50s. By the time they are 40, they should have earned more than a million and with interest and investing should have between 1-2 million in retirement. By 50 they should have 2.5-5 million.
Somewhere in their 40s, their investment income should completely outstrip their salary.
Feel like most engineers could seriously think about retiring in their late 40s or 50s.
The memo not only does NOT make the claim that women are less suited to tech roles and leadership roles, it makes the counter claim, that men have designed those roles to make them less friendly to women and that by altering those roles we can improve diversity and decrease the gender gap.
But I've yet to see a single neoliberal source treat the memo honestly, every neoliberal source I've seen treats Damore radically different than his behavior reflects. I don't agree with everything he says, but to claim he is against diversity is straight slander here.
He says hiring standards had been lowered for diversity.
Maybe he should have hiring standards had been changed, or hiring standards had been altered to accommodate but he said LOWERED.
He didn't hint that women are biologically inferior. He did say that women are, on average, interested in different things. Haven't you noticed? Go read the memo.
He said standards had to be lowered for diversity. He didn't straight up write out "women are inferior" but implied it all over the place.
The internet has always been an open discussion forum of all ideas.
I dislike the idea of posting hate speech online just as much as the next, and in principle I agree with what GoDaddy and Google did here, however if you can cancel someone's domain over unapproved speech, what protections do others have with holding their domains when they speak ill of the government of otherwise? Restricting speech is a slippery slope, if you remove it for one nutjob (like GoDaddy and Google did here), however awful it might be, you're opening the door for the government to shut down other domains that are critical of them.
Is Hate Speech very specifically called out as an exception to freedom of speech? I'm curious what their rationale is here, and how easily others can link this case to shutting down other people's view points on the internet as well.
Would love to hear how this is or is not a slippery slope towards censorship. Thanks.
Free speech? This is terrorism.
Guy drove his car into a crowd and killed people.
They're celebrating and asking more people to do the same.
If someone celebrates Boston bombings and says more people should do the same, that is not free speech.
Just imagine what would have happened if the car driver was Muslim and the website was a jihadist website. Would you still say free speech?
I don't agree with the opinion or agenda of neo-nazis, but unlike Google I defend their right to have and express one.
What Google is continuing to do is blatant radical left-wing peecee censorship/silencing of any alternative opinions.
It seems highly ironic to me that Google take the stance of being strongly against naziism yet take a notably similar approach to censoring freedom of speech.
Then don't use Google.
Google, GoDaddy has every right not to provide services to Nazi scum.
.
It is a shame he still seems to be unable to comprehend why he was fired. As an Engineer he should know that the has to identify a problem in order to fix it. Unless he recognizes what the problem really is, then he will just continue spinning in place, looking more and more foolish.
He has so much to benefit for not understanding why he was fired.
There is lawsuits going on that could result in a huge financial gain for him.
The long and short of it was that he hinted women and other diversity candidates biologically inferior. He didn't say it out right, he wink-winked it and put some favorable references give it a veneer of scientific soundness.
It wasn't a scientific paper. It was an opinion piece about his gender and racial (diversity) stereotype biases and his belief that is was based on genetics.
Experts have come out and said there isn't definitive proof that those biological differences would account for the differences. The cultural differences plays such a big huge part in all of this.
You cannot expect to use biology as your shield for supporting inequality without expecting a severe backlash. This country is founded on equality. If you want something else, find a different geography that espouses your views.
Let's be real.
We will never achieve perfect diversity.
But we are guaranteed equal opportunity under the constitution. Equal opportunity is not conditional on biology or "suited for" conclusions. The measuring stick is independent of biology. Unfortunately in these jobs, the perceived capacities often overshadow the real measurements and hence we get inequality based on biology.
If he wants to support "to those based on need from those based on their merit" - there is an ideology and a geography that supports that. And they would be happy to take him in. And for kicks - they may even drink his homo superior vs homo sapiens koolaid.
But not in this country. It's not about right and left, right and wrong. It's about equality.
People seem to believe that we're hiding the fact that white males make the best engineers and leaders, and others are just filling diversity seats, and it's true because so says the biologist.
The memo is exactly that. A whiny anti-diversity manifesto with crap references that is just a puffed up version of Trump's ideas of MAGA, pussy grab and kick em out framed for Google. Make Google great again by sending the women to the kitchen and the non-whites back to where they came from.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't seem to understand what "arranging" is, though.
You can't arrange something that doesn't exist. That would be writing.
The people covering the song are making an arrangement. They have to, because of the issues I talked about regarding some of the parts not even being written down. So they make an arrangement that sounds similar.
That's clearly not what I was talking about.
All I'm saying is Lennon/McCartney songs doesn't have Ringo as a songwriter even though he arranged all the drum parts.
Same with Octopuses Garden only has Ringo as the songwriter even though the entire band arranged the instrumental parts.
Almost all the famous and popular rocks songs on a "classic rock" station were written by the same songwriters that wrote the music on the "top 40" station.
And they were written by committee.
Even most of the songs written by the band members were written by committee, with one person starting from a theme or hook, and somebody else adding the other side of that, and then another person writing some of the parts. And then somebody else writes lyrics. Or, they start from the lyrics and they ask for changes as they figure out what fits with the music.
If there is only one songwriter listed, it often means they wrote the lyrics, chorus, and theme, and the other band members had to basically make up something to play along, but don't get credited.
It is actually maybe only in the least imaginative pop music where there is a single songwriter, outside of classical composition anyways.
If you watch a concert video of Miles Davis and pay attention to the interactions between the musicians you can see they're writing the music by committee in realtime.
Most exceptions are cases like Jonathan Richman, and the only reason it works is because he's a solo act. Sometimes with a percussionist, but they're just following. His famous early songs like Roadrunner that get covered were written for a full band, and the band members contributed a lot of the writing for the individual parts.
Look at what was actually "written" for a song that was "written" by one person; it is often something that requires 5 musicians to play, but only lyrics and rhythm guitar parts might have even been formally planned. But when another band covers the song, they're also copying much of what the other musicians played, not just what was "written." So it ends up being very misleading, and lots of bands the members sue each other over who really wrote what. That they don't agree even who wrote a song says a lot about the process, and how much of it was by committee!
Songwriting doesn't include arranging.
That's like including the camera-man, makeup, costume designer to the actors performance. Or an actor's performance to the script writer.
Real innovation involves changing paradigms, and every definition of "best people" is based on the mastery of those people based on existing paradigms. There is only a partial exemption for people who become famous for creating new paradigms to solve important problems, but they were NOT recognized as "best" until AFTERWARDS. More often, they spend most of their lives fighting against the old paradigms. (Any better sources than The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn? It's a classic, but old.)
Anecdotal evidence, but I spent many years supporting a highly prestigious research lab, and I didn't see much that I would regard as real innovation. Mostly a stream of minor refinements hammered into patents with the support of skilled lawyers and even though most of them should have failed on the obviousness test. I do NOT think it was a cultural thing, though I should acknowledge (and disclaim?) that the lab I supported was located in a country with a reputation for copying and improving rather than innovating...
Trivial example of a useful innovation that no one has apparently thought of yet: Why isn't there any Android app to turn off the sound for a period of time or on a regular schedule? At least I haven't been able to find one. I already know the answer as regards that research lab: Not likely to generate a patent.
True innovation and success is a random search. So many things have to line up exactly at the right time at the right place.
Humans want to see patterns and find them. Most of them fail statistical tests.
A few rules are true but there are so many false ones our there.
Every time I hear a professor, boss, etc. start talking "team assignment," I know its just a polite way of having the strong students/employees carry the weak ones. Instead of some people getting A's and some getting F's, everyone gets a C. Kurt Vonnegut would be proud.
And that is why most open source projects and github projects have only one contributor.
But not the best ones ...
Actually, the plenty of alt-coins is part of the problem. Just how many currencies do you expect to carry, or alternatively expect the corner store to be willing to deal in?
If you're willing to trust a central authority anyway, are you sure you'd rather trust one with a five or less year track record over one that's 200 years old?
A lot of places have something like an auto exchange feature anyway. You can choose what to pay in and the seller can choose what to get their payment in. Just some exchange will do the change.
It still has the problem of being delayed but for online transactions it works OK.
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-gtx-1080-ti?e=0.15¤cy=USD
That is today's profitability. You can't project that into the future. More realistic profitability calculators factor in difficulty increases. Also power costs seem off. $0.15 looks more like baseline residential pricing. GPU mining will likely blow way past baseline and into the next higher tier of pricing. As I mentioned earlier you need to make sure comparisons are using beyond baseline pricing.
If coin prices decline, difficulty decreases and if coin prices rise, difficulty increases. I think they balance themselves out.
No. More miners (more hashing power technically) more difficulty. Less miners less difficulty. More people joining the mining scene increases difficulty regardless of what price is doing.
Plus, there are automated pool that will mine the most profitable coin and auto-exchange it to your preferred coin.
Not a "plus", that is what your profitability link above assumes, constant switching to the more profitable algorithms as alt-coin enthusiasts bid for your hashing power.
Who know what will happen. From the past it looks like 3 month ROI is plausible. It has been better before and it has been worse but just an average of 3 months.
The past is what I described in scenario (2) earlier. That was actual data since the summer, mildly rounded for convenience. Those nicehash estimates do not project out as you assume. Plus they understate costs since they only factor the GPU power requirements. As I mentioned earlier you have to use a watt meter and measure what the entire computer is consuming when it is hashing.
I totally agree with you that investing has been far more profitable than mining. If you just want to get a sweet GPU or system paid for my mining in about 3 months without a lot of work, it looks to be possible. Mining rigs or cypto investing is almost a part time job since you have to keep on top of so many things and maybe not the best use of your time. Even if pays for itself in 6 months, it's still a good deal. Most stores will give you a 0% APR for 6 month loan for buying over $500.
If you want the GPU for non-mining purposes, sure, mine to subsidize the purchase. Why leave the system off/sleeping if mining is profitable? Maybe go up a model and get a slightly more expensive card, scenario (1) earlier. I'm just arguing that if the only reason for the GPU is mining things need to be viewed differently, a delay to purchase possibly warranted depending on what coin price expectations are.
Mining paid for my 1070 and AMD cards. I bought two 1080 Ti and one of them is paid off. The other will be paid off in a month and half more.
It has worked for me since I started. Profitability actually seems to be going up rather than down nowadays. Perhaps Volta release will change that but my cards will be all paid off by then and I should have a little bit extra to go for the top of the line Volta.
The big argument for Bitcoin retaining any value was it's usefulness and eventual use as a daily means of exchanging value. Taking a week for a transaction to clear and stratospheric transaction costs negate that future use. Even a conference for Bitcoin isn't accepting bitcoin now!
Nobody is going to accept transaction costs of more than a few percent for small transactions and nobody is going to sell anything more expensive than a cup of coffee without using an escrow and waiting until the transfer to that escrow clears before they hand over the product or service. That pretty much kills it as a means of value exchange except as a last resort.
The final nail in the coffin, it is just as traceable as a credit card or bank transfer. The people who touted it as being as anonymous as cash have been proven wrong.
Given that, what is the new theory for it retaining any value at all? It IS a fiat currency. The bit of digital data and the whole blockchain carry no intrinsic value outside of the value exchange, just like any fiat currency. If that bit of data represents anything at all, it represents the burned coal that produced the power to run the mining machine. How valuable do you suppose already burned coal is?
Like most modern financial instruments, when the music stops, a very few will make some money and a bunch of people will find no chair.
There are plenty of alt-coins that have solved those problems and even bitcoin with their lightning system is looking to solve it.
Plus, bitcoin transactions doesn't have to be on the chain for coffee. Coinbase does free instant bitcoin transfers but you have to trust a central authority. There is the lightning network that reduces the blockchain dependence.
Bitcoin never ever said it was anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your slashdot user name is a psuedonymn but I can infer your real identity from it. It is the same for bitcoin. There are alt-coins that are completely anonymous.
Speaking of coal, someone compared bitcoin to mined diamonds. Instead of carrying all your wealth in a tiny bag, you'll have it in the secret key for your wallet.
Bitcoin's explosive growth is over. It will just retain value against inflation from now on. It could also pop and be over, but I think something like that is as equally likely as another spurt that will make bitcoin worth $100,000 a coin.
Bitcoin's influence could change how governments, finance and economies work. Unlike beanie babies and tulips, it doesn't seem to as worthless.
Yes it was sexist rather than racist, but that makes no difference legally, just a different form of unacceptable bigotry.
He did have a quip regarding races as well. He said hiring standards were lowered.
...as an engineer after a manifesto questioning the benefits of diversity programs....
His manifesto did not question the benefits of the diversity program. It questioned its fficacy -- in other words, he questioned if Google could achieve more diversity by structuring the program differently.
And that's a very big difference. I really hate the level of journalism being thrown at this topic, here and everywhere else.
He was not fired for his manifesto.
He was fired for being disruptive to his co-workers.
Unless all his co-workers were conservative white male, his belief that he was superior (or more ideal or more suitable) engineer than his colleagues was disruptive. How would a colleague of different gender or race work with him?
Would you consider giving him a leadership position in a team with those beliefs? Would you trust him with any sort of power over others?
https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-gtx-1080-ti?e=0.15¤cy=USD
If coin prices decline, difficulty decreases and if coin prices rise, difficulty increases. I think they balance themselves out.
Plus, there are automated pool that will mine the most profitable coin and auto-exchange it to your preferred coin.
Who know what will happen. From the past it looks like 3 month ROI is plausible. It has been better before and it has been worse but just an average of 3 months.
I totally agree with you that investing has been far more profitable than mining. If you just want to get a sweet GPU or system paid for my mining in about 3 months without a lot of work, it looks to be possible. Mining rigs or cypto investing is almost a part time job since you have to keep on top of so many things and maybe not the best use of your time.
Even if pays for itself in 6 months, it's still a good deal. Most stores will give you a 0% APR for 6 month loan for buying over $500.
The difficulty level is set I think every 14 days or so.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
If all chinese BC mining farms went offline then after that time cost to compute for non chinese farms would drop to compensate
Impact: fun 14 days then normal.
The Chinese will just move the farm to Mongolia or Eastern Europe. The farms will not go offline.
If you want to get in on the cryptocurrency mining scene ...
Stop yourself, don't do it. Take either of these two paths: (1) You were going to buy a GPU anyway for some non-mining reason. Go ahead, buy the GPU. Maybe, **maybe**, buy a model up one level of performance/price from what you would have otherwise bought, if its a low to midrange model. Say if you were otherwise planning on a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ***maybe*** get a GTX 1060 6GB, ****maybe****. If you were otherwise getting a high performer, say a 1070 Ti for that 4K monitor, do *****not***** go up a level to a 1080 Ti. Then let the GPU mine when you are not using the machine. Use a watt meter to determine the total power consumption of your machine to determine power usage, do *not* trust online references that say your GPU uses so many watts. When your GPU is mining other parts of the computer are also drawing power, especially the CPU which may also be mining. You want to know the total system power and make sure your mining proceeds exceed that amount. Be sure to use above baseline residential power rates in your calculations, do *not* just look at your current bill and expect the current rate. If it is not profitable to mine do *not* fall into the trap that "the coin price will eventually rise and make it profitable", that is a losing game. Instead, take whatever money you would spend on power and just buy the coins directly, you will have more coins that way if the price rises. But above all else, do not get into the mindset of joining the mining scene, that is a path to losing money. Stay in the scene "the GPU I have anyway can make some coin when I'm not using it". (2) Take whatever money you were willing to spend on a GPU for mining and just buy coins with that money. You will likely do better that way if the price rises. Many miners fall into the trap that they are profitable and pat themselves on the back. They do not consider the opportunity cost of the alternative of just buying coins directly. The following are very rough estimates but the point will nonetheless be clear. Lets say you spent $500 on a GPU last summer and another $500 on a GPU last fall. At above baseline residential power rates maybe you have about an extra $1,000 after factoring in power. Congrats your GPUs are now paid. However your friend bought $500 worth of bitcoin in the summer and another $500 in the fall and now has $3,000 worth of bitcoin. You are at net $0, he is at net $2,0000. If you are willing to gamble on increasing coin prices you may be better off just buying coins directly. Things are not as simple as a mining rig being profitable, the opportunity cost of the just buy directly must be considered. Many other things must also be considered before joining the mining scene.
Buy a dual 1080 Ti. Stick it your computer and it will pay for itself in 3 months. You can also game on it once in a while.
Investing a little in crypto is silly because even if things go really well, you get a little bit. Most of the benefits goes to the early investors or big fishes. You'll just spend all this time and energy figuring out the snakepit that is crypto trading for minute amounts of gain.
Go big or just go enough to pay for your Ryzen 7 and 1080 Tis.
Do people use Bitcoin to complete transactions for material goods or has Bitcoin become an investment vehicle?? I.e. What percentage of Bitcoin transactions pay for pizza (or Teslas or houses) and what percentage are people saying "I'll just buy low and sell high and make a killing like everyone else". I assume there's no way to look at the blockchain and determine this ... that would pretty much kill the idea of anonymity.
It's more a reference system right now.
You can have smaller centralized systems like coinbase where you can do fee-less, instant transactions but it's not on the blockchain. However, the conversion from fiat to BTC is done with reference to the exchange systems.
When all these companies talk about AI, what they really mean is a way to provide back-end servers, neural net chips, GPUS and such so that they can charge for the deep learning systems that everyone wants to use to process the data to find those little nuggets. They are not working on building general AI systems or even working on how to architecture one. They want to make money and the money is in the service. Just like Amazon, Google and IBM. Facebook uses AI and provide some services. But the future where you need fast real-time detection of things that your automated cars and planes will be doing, where it sends all that to a massive computer to do the processing and sends the results back is what they are talking about (at least in these last few and next 5 years). The AI systems, based on neural nets as still so simple compared to what humans can do, it will be a little while before real general AI gets around. And the Robotic technology and hardware to house it is so far behind the software at this point. It will all come, bio-robotics, Bio-AI, might be here first. You can't stop technology and you won't stop developing AI systems, we learn more and more each month, but there are still a lot of unsolved hard AI problems and formalizing all that is even harder.
Then why does Baidu have Apollo?
The cutting edge of R&D on all AI is often supported by tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Baidu.
There's proof of space proposal from the bit-torrent guy. https://www.coindesk.com/proof...
the drugs that kept a family member of mine alive were made in Europe at public Universities. Most drugs are (and then they're packaged up my big Pharma into profits). The computer I'm typing on wouldn't exist without massive public spending. We're cutting all this back so we can give more and more money to the elites. Let's stop that. I get it, everybody's afraid of tax raises because even at $250k/yr a lot of us are paycheck to paycheck (60-80% depending on how you run the numbers). But here's a crazy idea: We can raise taxes on the wealthy elite without raising taxes on the workers? I know, crazy right? All it takes is to stop voting for your friendly neighborhood right winger. Oh, and make sure you show up at your Primaries so they don't sneak an economic right winger in because they're socially left wing.
Living paycheck to paycheck on 250k/yr? How do you even spend roughly $500-$600/day, 20K/month on?
I switched careers to something completely unrelated at 30-ish. After about 8 years, I felt like I was just fixing the same problems over and over again, and I wanted a bigger challenge.
This is a huge problem with software engineering jobs I've seen. The only way to do something different is to quit your job and start somewhere else.
With accounting or other professions, there is a very clear defined role from junior work to senior work.
With software, the more knowledge you have of the system, the more valuable you become exactly where you are.
Early fifties here. Been in the industry for (oh gosh) almost 30 years now, 26 at the same company. I burned out on programming after Year 19 at said company, and moved on to being an engineering manager, running a team of software developers. What I've discovered is that while I do miss the pure programming (a bit), I don't miss the grind. I've also discovered I have a talent for spotting talent, hiring and mentoring young engineers and turning them into seasoned engineers.
I hope to retire by the time I'm 60. Between a 401k, some real estate, and some Bitcoin holdings that have done remarkably well, it'll probably happen. A job candidate I was interviewing once asked me "what advice might you have for a young engineer just entering the industry"? I gave him an answer he wasn't expecting.
"Max out your 401k as soon as humanly possible".
I was doing retirement calculations and it seems engineers should have no problem retiring in their 50s. By the time they are 40, they should have earned more than a million and with interest and investing should have between 1-2 million in retirement. By 50 they should have 2.5-5 million.
Somewhere in their 40s, their investment income should completely outstrip their salary.
Feel like most engineers could seriously think about retiring in their late 40s or 50s.
The memo not only does NOT make the claim that women are less suited to tech roles and leadership roles, it makes the counter claim, that men have designed those roles to make them less friendly to women and that by altering those roles we can improve diversity and decrease the gender gap.
But I've yet to see a single neoliberal source treat the memo honestly, every neoliberal source I've seen treats Damore radically different than his behavior reflects. I don't agree with everything he says, but to claim he is against diversity is straight slander here.
He says hiring standards had been lowered for diversity.
Maybe he should have hiring standards had been changed, or hiring standards had been altered to accommodate but he said LOWERED.
He didn't hint that women are biologically inferior. He did say that women are, on average, interested in different things. Haven't you noticed? Go read the memo.
He said standards had to be lowered for diversity. He didn't straight up write out "women are inferior" but implied it all over the place.
The internet has always been an open discussion forum of all ideas. I dislike the idea of posting hate speech online just as much as the next, and in principle I agree with what GoDaddy and Google did here, however if you can cancel someone's domain over unapproved speech, what protections do others have with holding their domains when they speak ill of the government of otherwise? Restricting speech is a slippery slope, if you remove it for one nutjob (like GoDaddy and Google did here), however awful it might be, you're opening the door for the government to shut down other domains that are critical of them. Is Hate Speech very specifically called out as an exception to freedom of speech? I'm curious what their rationale is here, and how easily others can link this case to shutting down other people's view points on the internet as well. Would love to hear how this is or is not a slippery slope towards censorship. Thanks.
Free speech? This is terrorism.
Guy drove his car into a crowd and killed people.
They're celebrating and asking more people to do the same.
If someone celebrates Boston bombings and says more people should do the same, that is not free speech.
Just imagine what would have happened if the car driver was Muslim and the website was a jihadist website. Would you still say free speech?
I don't agree with the opinion or agenda of neo-nazis, but unlike Google I defend their right to have and express one. What Google is continuing to do is blatant radical left-wing peecee censorship/silencing of any alternative opinions. It seems highly ironic to me that Google take the stance of being strongly against naziism yet take a notably similar approach to censoring freedom of speech.
Then don't use Google.
Google, GoDaddy has every right not to provide services to Nazi scum.
FTFY.
. It is a shame he still seems to be unable to comprehend why he was fired. As an Engineer he should know that the has to identify a problem in order to fix it. Unless he recognizes what the problem really is, then he will just continue spinning in place, looking more and more foolish.
He has so much to benefit for not understanding why he was fired.
There is lawsuits going on that could result in a huge financial gain for him.
The long and short of it was that he hinted women and other diversity candidates biologically inferior. He didn't say it out right, he wink-winked it and put some favorable references give it a veneer of scientific soundness.
It wasn't a scientific paper. It was an opinion piece about his gender and racial (diversity) stereotype biases and his belief that is was based on genetics.
Experts have come out and said there isn't definitive proof that those biological differences would account for the differences. The cultural differences plays such a big huge part in all of this.
You cannot expect to use biology as your shield for supporting inequality without expecting a severe backlash. This country is founded on equality. If you want something else, find a different geography that espouses your views. Let's be real. We will never achieve perfect diversity. But we are guaranteed equal opportunity under the constitution. Equal opportunity is not conditional on biology or "suited for" conclusions. The measuring stick is independent of biology. Unfortunately in these jobs, the perceived capacities often overshadow the real measurements and hence we get inequality based on biology. If he wants to support "to those based on need from those based on their merit" - there is an ideology and a geography that supports that. And they would be happy to take him in. And for kicks - they may even drink his homo superior vs homo sapiens koolaid. But not in this country. It's not about right and left, right and wrong. It's about equality.
People seem to believe that we're hiding the fact that white males make the best engineers and leaders, and others are just filling diversity seats, and it's true because so says the biologist.
The memo is exactly that. A whiny anti-diversity manifesto with crap references that is just a puffed up version of Trump's ideas of MAGA, pussy grab and kick em out framed for Google. Make Google great again by sending the women to the kitchen and the non-whites back to where they came from.