Author of ts-sql here. Shin Ando has forked my proof of concept / toy implementation and made it much more practical, if you're thinking about spending time on this idea that's probably a better starting point: https://github.com/andoshin11/sqlpture
When tether collapses it can take the whole crypto economy with it, including Compound. If you want to short it you have to do so in an indirect way, e.g. by shorting MSTR or COIN.
I've heard a lot of credulous people describing these reports as proof of aliens. To me the idea that aliens exist is unsurprising, but aliens being here would imply FTL is possible, and that would be a huge discovery!
I don't think aliens being here implies FTL travel. If we're assuming that there's such a huge thing we don't know, it seems equally likely (or even more likely) to be a surprising surprise. We're assuming that they got here in a way we didn't anticipate, so why assume that it's via FTL travel?
Why? There are plenty of stars within a sub-light-speed radius since events that could've announced us to the galaxy: advent of radio, first nuclear tests, etc.
The sheer timescales and energy levels involved with all known methods of transportation is what makes it unlikely - at least for life on the timescales we live on.
The odds someone is interested enough to spend truly mind boggling amounts of energy (literally moving hundreds of mountains worth) and hundred of years to check us out after one of those events - and not even say hi - is low. That they are also so close - also low. If they have some sort of magic drive tech (implied by the behavior of these drive sightings), then that changes the math a lot.
Most people mean ‘magic drive tech’ when they say FTL.
"The odds someone is interested enough to spend truly mind boggling amounts of energy (literally moving hundreds of mountains worth) and hundred of years to check us out after one of those events - and not even say hi - is low. That they are also so close - also low."
How could one even begin to make that kind of reasoning? Then the conclusion estimating the low probability is based on what? If I'd have to guess, I'd say otherwise - once a reasonably developed civilization (Kardashev type II and above) gets access to colossal amount of energy, there aren't that many things worth spending it (and attention in general) for. Life may or may not be plentiful around in the universe (it occured relatively shortly after Earth formation), but I'd bet sentient life is orders of magnitude more scarce, considering that it took billions for it to develop on Earth. That alone would make potential cradles for sentient life to be very interesting destinations to check once in a while. To provide here a relatable example, let's imagine a mostly desert continent, with a community living somewhere on its coast. At one point they develop enough capabilities to safely venture out in the desert and to make long journeys. How interested would they be in revisiting some oasis where they encountered some earthworms and small plants, and how interested would they be in revisiting a place (even across the continent, if that is what takes) with apes which happened to also exhibit some signs of primitive engineering?
P.S.: With all that, I still hope we're alone within a large enough vicinity, so we won't have to deal with anyone else for as long as our species exists.
It’s pretty simple math? We’ve only had meaningful ‘not background event’ radio transmissions for about 115 years [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_radio]. Assuming no faster than light travel or similar magic (to the earlier point), but some near light speed magic drive, even if our potential visitors had the ability (and interest) to accelerate to light speed the moment they picked up Marconi’s initial broadcast, they would have to be within about 57-58 light years or less radius of us.
Which sounds like a lot. But there is estimated to be about 10 to 100 billion star systems in the Milky Way alone. So the odds that any of those stars are occupied by any excitijg neighbors is pretty low, unless the number of alien species+occupied star systems is mind bogglingly large. If there are 100 occupied star systems randomly dispersed in the galaxy meeting all these requirements, it would be one in 70,000 to 1 in 700,000 odds for instance.
Not great. And that is assuming a lot about how much energy they would be willing to expend. We’ve seen no evidence of anything resembling a Kardashev type civilization in the neighborhood.
If there is magic FTL tech, obviously everything is different. Also, who knows maybe we grew up next door to an equivalent to a intergalactic bus depot. That would also change things.
At least based on what we know now though, the tyranny of the rocket equation is rather complete, the distances involved in traveling between star systems so vast, and the energy requirements of even approaching C are so high that it is not a realistic thing to consider for life that works the way we do any time soon.
Your math is sound, but I don't agree with all your data inputs. Specifically, that only (the engineered) radio signals would pick the attention of an alien civilization. (In fact, I think that Marconi's or most of the subsequent man generated signals, maybe with exception of nuclear detonations and such, were to faint to be picked up even from within the limits of our own planetary system.) The most obvious clue for presence of life, visible from far away, started with the Great Oxygenation Event. That enough should put Earth on anyone's map, and that happened 2 billions years ago. Achieving 100% of light speed is not possible within our current knowledge, but I assume that 20% should be for non life-carrier spacecraft, which at our galaxy's 200ly diameter gives us a cap of around 1'000 years of travel between most of the intra-galactic destinations. Even with a 10'000 technological head-start, a given civilization can devise a system to achieve galactic oversight. If there's indeed someone out there, with such a head-start, we should assume they're already watched our planet closely and maybe even getting a continuous track of our evolution.
As for "we’ve seen no evidence of anything resembling a Kardashev type civilization in the neighborhood", although you're right, it's hardly useful to think in this frame. The available means that we had so far for observing anything in far away space were and still are pretty limited, for even inert phenomena. I'd say that counting on that to spot something sentient, where things are actively engineered, which may as well include engineering for the appearance itself, is overly optimistic.
We’re just getting more and more hypothetical in a complete vacuum of real information though right?
If we’re trying to get something even somewhat defensible, there has to be some grounding on SOMETHING, or it’s all just fantasy.
If they spent 10k ly getting here, and the ungodly amount of energy and time it would take to do 20% of light speed over that distance, and they had since the great oxygenation event to notice us and get here (and have such a technological and energy advantage over us they were able to do it) - then why are they being seen randomly checking out military aircraft (not very smart or subtle it seems?) but never talk to anyone else? And show no other signs of existing?
Not impossible, but seems like a truly massive amount of energy and commitment of time over what far exceeds the timescales life as we know it works on to check out what could just be a puddle full of gooey algae for all they knew. And then potentially just sitting and watching for 100 million or a billion years.
At least seeing radio signals or a double flash from a nuke test means there is something like intelligent life?
"We’re just getting more and more hypothetical in a complete vacuum of real information though right?"
Not really. Both of us were counting on current human knowledge, that our galaxy is this (light years) large, that the maximum speed is that of light and that an exponential amounts of energy is needed for each logarithmic increment of relativistic speed, that there is a working model for life based on what we call organic chemistry, that an atmosphere rich in a highly reactant element that is oxygen can not exist without something continuously producing it and what that could mean for an alien observer, all because, in the slim chance that we are the ones with technological head-start, that should serve as base ingredients for thinking about our long-term future external policy. I'm thinking if we are to become Kardashev type II (and above) civilization, what ought to be the best approach in dealing with an evolving galaxy? But yes, there are also aspects which are hard to think of now in more than hypothetical terms, like what would mean in practical terms to have access to (at least) a star's amount of energy and what it would be worth spending it on. To me, "to check out what could just be a puddle full of gooey algae" looks like a very important objective, and finding something underwhelming should be the desired result, safety wise.
No, aliens (or alien-made un-aliened probes) being here wouldn't mean FTL is possible. It would imply very advanced societies are capable of diverting energy into projects with very long payoff windows, but not the existence of FTL travel.
Not necessarily. These could very well be a fleet of self-replicating “unmanned” drones that were sent on a mission to explore the galaxy millions of years ago. Heck, our own civilization likely isn’t all that far off (relatively speaking) from being able to do the same thing
Common telesales advice is to smile before you pick up the phone, because people can hear your smile and are generally more receptive to whatever you're going to say if you sound friendly. I wonder if this trick works in Russia?
I feel like they're pretty strongly incentivised to not improve it. They want to push people to the app, and they have enough traction and community lock-in that they're not really worried about losing traffic
If you are rich, you might or might not suffer some hardships. If you are poor, there probably isn't much you can do. The best advice is to become rich.
this sounds like "the beginner's guide to surviving the coming zombie apocalypse". Maybe you can prepare for a few days or weeks of isolation, but climate change does not just go away and get better. How long are your bullets really going to last?
Banning crypto mining would be a far easier solution and better for the world and humanity as a whole. No one is going to push for "100% renewable crypto mining", so just ban it completely.
Honestly it is absolutely unforgivable that people still push cryptocurrency in the face of the existential threat to humanity that global heating presents. It's a completely immoral, destructive, evil.
You know how much my household contributes? Add a few more zeroes. Do you know how much that car over there contributes? Very, very, very little. That plane? Hardly anything. Nothing poses an existential threat.
Your comment reads as if "crypto" is synonymous with "Proof of Work cryptos". Are you suggesting a blanket ban on all cryptocurrencies regardless of their electrical efficiencies, or specifically PoW-style mining?
PoW and PoS are both Proof of Waste. It's evil, especially so in this environment.
Humans need to co-operate to survive global heating, we cannot avoid trust, we need to make it easier to trust each other. If you buy into cryptocurrency you are implicitly abandoning hope of humanity surviving this crisis, in fact you're hastening our downfall.
What do you want, us to stop using energy? That's not gonna happen, the best you can do is to have tried to limit carbon emissions decades ago, but it's far too late for anything like that. Fuck it, pedal to the metal.
No, I want us to stop wasting energy on anti-social ideas. I want governments to end an industry that produces a net-negative value and is at least 75% powered by coal.
"Anti-social ideas" is in the eye of the beholder, given that a society is generally a diverse social landscape. I know many people who consider cryptocurrencies to be one of the biggest social boons in recent times.
A unified, international ban on something is a nearly unprecedented achievement, apart from perhaps chemical weapons, and even then i'm not sure all nations had a seat at the table.
You also referred to cyprots as "evil" earlier in this thread. What specifically about cryptocurrencies has given you this strong sentiment? (To be clear i appreciate your passion on the topic, i'm legitimately trying to understand your viewpoint, if that isn't obvious).
On the opposite end of the morality spectrum, some people think it's absolutely unforgivable to continue supporting corrupt governments that irresponsibly inflate their fiat to unusable levels, which is a much more immediate concern for some people than the ice is melting ad nauseum for like 50+ years, and use crypto as an alternative store of wealth when their governments fail them. So, whatever, let China use their energy to solve some stupidly complex algorithms to process transactions. In the end, it won't even matter.
Good question. This occurred on the Binance Smart Chain. Binance gets rather boxy about determining its own jurisdiction and has offices in several different countries, but the activities on the chain itself are supposedly permissionless and Binance will claim they have no control over it.
Unfortunately, $32M is probably not enough to warrant an investigation.
This kind of stuff is a shame, because there's a lot of ethical and innovative applications in DeFi, like Uniswap, Aave, Compound, and Yearn. There's also index tokens managed via the Set Protocol that have been running for years with no issues. BSC is a fork of Ethereum and the main appeal is lower transaction fees (at the cost of centralization). From my perspective, BSC tends to be forks of Ethereum based projects deployed by devs that have little idea how they work. I look at many projects on BSC as being little better than a casino game.
> I look at many projects on BSC as being little better than a casino game.
Heck, a nontrivial number of applications running on BSC are literally casino games. It's somewhat popular as a way of implementing (unregulated and probably illegal) online gaming.
