Crypto theory

SteveDeansPhotography said

Unfocussed Mike he's narrowed it down to 200m2 and up to 15 metres deep. Oh dear

Yes and he's going to use "AI" and "NASA technology" (he's actually going to send it to OnTrack).

It is of course all a tiny little bit his girlfriend's fault for doing him a favour by throwing out rubbish he said was rubbish in the first place:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/half-a-billion-in-bitcoin-lost-in-the-dump 

Later, when the couple slid into bed, Howells asked Hafina, who dropped off their kids at day care each morning, if she would mind taking the trash to the dump also. He remembers her declining, saying, “It’s not my fucking job—it’s your job.” Howells conceded the point. As his head hit the pillow, he recalls, he made a mental note to remove the hard drive from the bag. “I’m a systems engineer,” he said. “I’ve never thrown a hard drive in the bin. It’s just a bad idea.”

The next day, Hafina got up early and took the garbage to the landfill after all. Howells remembers waking upon her return, at around nine. “Ah, did you take the bag to the tip?” he asked. He told himself, “Oh, fuck—she’s chucked it,” but he was still groggy, and he soon fell back asleep.

In the back of his mind, all the time, he needs this explanation, to cope with his idiocy. He needs to be superior-minded about never throwing away hard disks (even though he'd put that one in a rubbish bag); that's something people like his girlfriend do, not him.

Best bit of this article is this bit of absolute twaddle:

Howells read Nakamoto’s proposal soon after it was posted. He was already skeptical of power and those who had it. The neoliberal years had not been good for Howells’s generation in Wales: the coal mines had closed, reducing trade at the port, and Newport lacked jobs in other industries. “The elders own all the property,” Howells told me. “People of my generation just leave.” The bailout of big banks after the 2008 crash taught him that “the dollar, the euro, and the pound are scams—the whole system is a sham.” He was an ideal apostle for the techno-utopianism of the Bitcoin system. “Me and Satoshi in 2009 both had the same vision,” Howells said.

"Me and Satoshi". 

One of these two is a single cryptographer or group of cryptographers who produced a clever genre-defining distributed cryptographic ledger.

The other is a bloke from Wales who doesn't make backups.

Edited by Unfocussed Mike

Unfocussed Mike claims he can pinpoint it using codes the council give the general waste skip, of course only the council have the info. What if a bulldozer track crushed the thing to bits?

Bruv is more into the financial discussions than I am, but I was fascinated by this discussion on Crypto Critics Corner he played for me yesterday.

I have no expertise - just a general feeling of scepticism for new shiny financial products and an absolute outrage about capture of the U.S. financial system by fraudsters in every area.

The movie 'Margin Call is one of my favourite movies.'

Crypto Critics chew the fat here about recent developments here:

Edited by Timmee

the downside is the technology becomes obsolete. its only useful when its working reliably. seems like a fragile platform. good idea in terms of broad application across the globe but I think needs to be backed up by solid currency such as gold etc. a better system might emerge. you can't easily trade real items in bitcoin so that's a problem aswell at the moment. I don't think as a currency its secure enough. even if you could use it to buy and sell there's no knowing if it will all crash or fail one day so it doesn't give much confidence as things are.

SteveDeansPhotography said

Unfocussed Mike claims he can pinpoint it using codes the council give the general waste skip, of course only the council have the info. What if a bulldozer track crushed the thing to bits?

Indeed. It's not some big old 5.25" disk encased in a thumping great desktop. It's a laptop hard disk. It's quite likely it was unrecoverable within days of being in the ground.

Timmee said

The movie 'Margin Call is one of my favourite movies.'

Margin Call is staggering. That one scene alone could run as a short film. Just looking at their facial expressions, the way they shuffle in their seats, Zachary Quinto's smirk after Jeremy Irons pauses for dramatic effect before saying "capitalism", Jeremy Irons saying "golden retriever"...

I could watch that again and again. In fact I do.

Edited by Unfocussed Mike

Unfocussed Mike ah, imagined it was desktop harddrive. Thin and quite squashy then

Edited by SteveDeansPhotography

Unfocussed Mike

The cast and performances are top drawer. Cancelled Kevin Spacey's performance is an absolute tour-de-force. His fall is much greater than that of Stanley Tucci's  character (who's self-worth and world remains in tact) because it becomes clear to Spacey's character - Sam Rogers - that the things he thought important were worthless and he has lost the things that could console & comfort him now. His depiction of catastrophic decline &  the pain of self-realisation is a truly moving performance. I'm a hard-bitten cynical of bastard but I had tears in my eyes in the final scene (no spoilers on that.)

Edited by Timmee

The short version is this: if it looks too good to be true, I won't touch it.

And yes, crypto-currencies smell like Ponzi schemes to me.

morozhenoye said

The short version is this: if it looks too good to be true, I won't touch it.

My long-term three-point advice for the internet:

1) don't be stupid

2) don't be greedy

3) don't be stupid and greedy

Comedy Gold:

I have just received an email from PayPal with the strapline 'Answers your crypto questions.'

Ever get the feeling you're being surveilled?  🤣

Edited by Timmee