this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] zd9@lemmy.world 140 points 1 day ago (9 children)

It was never meant to be used in this way at this scale though. He put out a new method/paradigm and that was that. It was the asshole investor tech bros that destroyed the planet once they learned of it.

Just like anything, almost no tech or thing is inherently bad, but it becomes bad when the ruling class get their greedy grimy little grimy in it.

[–] DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Even gen AI, despite how it has been used as a tool for the enrichment of the more privileged 0.1% as a tool of suppression of artists' (and critics of technofascism's) voices, is not really a harmful technology.

With enough copyright protections, and regulation of deep fakes, digital formats, and a bunch of other things, I could see gen AI being a valuable collaborator to creative output and workflows.

Hell, other than weapons, I find it hard to justify calling any technology inherently evil or nefarious. And even then, weapons have saved many innocent people's lives against unjustified attacks, wild animals and other threats.

Still, if we don't treat each technological invention with the right amount of cautiousness and care, we risk the deaths of, sometimes, even thousands or tens of thousands of people.

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Exactly. There are also hundreds of useful applications more than just consumer facing that you may be aware of. For example, I do research for climate models and we're using diffusion models to make the data assimilation step more accurate, so there's all kinds of things other than just making funny pictures or songs or whatever.

[–] Chakravanti@monero.town 4 points 1 day ago

Tech is like a gun and a space ship. Neither have Will.

Also, apparently you haven't been paying attention to that Will's candid work. You're missing a few zeros on it's current work. Sure they're denying what is so fucking obvious. I hole you like cheese because our Madness Will make a Heidi face of being forced to eating something like Limburger.

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[–] purrtastic@lemmy.nz 50 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is neither science nor a meme

[–] mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This definitionally is a meme.

My pet hate is people who say things aren’t memes when they definitionally are.

Screenshots of twitter posts are a meme genre.

You may not like that fact but it’s true.

The scientific content is debatable I’ll give you that.

[–] A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl 4 points 1 day ago

100%

I hate cripto and all, but i almost hate more people posting just statements in what's suppose to be a meme community, not funny statements, no memes about politics, just text, bastardizing the point of a meme community, wich is to see... memes.

[–] ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

But it does express a popular opinion which helps us all feel good about ourselves, and that's what really matters

[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 58 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What's worse is that there are modern alternatives that can process hundreds of transactions per second without any mining at all

But Bitcoin people don't care about that because they don't use Bitcoin for actual payments, they use the price to pump their bags

[–] JayDee 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What alternatives are you talking about? I've not heard of any.

[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

Nano, Atto and a few other payment-focused coins

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (5 children)

In case this is an honest question:
Ripple and Stellar are popular examples of networks that can process lots of transactions fast and cheap, but in my perspective they're both examples of tech bros finding a new playground - especially true for Ripple.
But there are other gems such as https://nano.org/en, which come to mind. It's true open source, was distributed for free, has transactions without a fee and can process hundreds of transactions per second with a tiny ecological footprint.
Yeah, I know, it sounds too good to be true, but if you have a closer look, it just is good.
Monero does not exactly have the capacity for hundreds of transactions per second, but offers a degree of privacy that's awesome.
And then there's the OG Ethereum, which in fact can process lots of transactions per second often at a quite low cost, which offers a Turing complete smart contract language.
You see, there are at least some alternatives, which offer lots of fast and cheap or even feeless transactions or transactions with other benefits, wuch as privacy.
The development didn't stop with the "train wreck waiting to happen Bitcoin".
I'm glad Bitcoin created the whole crypto sphere.
At the same time I'm dumbstruck how most of the whole sphere is just a soulless, useless money grab.
It's hard to find the projects that aren't, but they are here, hidden in a pile of shit.
You might realize that the projects I listed are more or less random examples, which mostly have one thing in common: they've been around for quite some time.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Nano gave out its supply with centrally administered CAPTCHAs. That means they could have simply exempted insiders from having to do the CAPTCHAs at all, getting >51% of the supply for free. You're expecting everyone who ever uses that money supply to trust a central party for something we can't audit.

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[–] msage@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I know naming is hard, but there are already other nano projects, so fuck any new ones.

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[–] yogurtwrong@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

What is the modern alternative for decentralized, eco friendly money?

I know monero is praised a lot by the people of penguin but that one also requires mining.

[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

Nano has one of the lightest nodes, making it quite eco friendly. And Atto's node can run on a 1 GB VPS (the minimum requirements are here)

[–] Liketearsinrain@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It is praised for its anonymity, and it uses an algorithm that purposefully works worse on GPUs and probably ASICS, but don't quote me on that.

A lot of malware bundles miners for it because of it.

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[–] jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip 48 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It's stuff like this that leaves me completely hopeless that the AI industry will ever see the crash that it 100% deserves.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It could always turn out like NFTs did. Don’t lose hope yet.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why did NFTs only last a single bubble, while Bitcoin persists?

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 6 points 1 day ago

Because it seems like a stupid idea on a surface? (Not to imply it's not a stupid idea on other levels too, but crypto and AI are not ridiculous in the surface)

[–] Goodeye8@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago

Bitcoin never had the US economy dependent on it. It will slowly fizzle out as people realize their monopoly money becomes worthless when nobody wants to buy it.

AI on the other hand doesn't have luxury of fizzling out because the economy is dependent on it.

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[–] some_guy 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If those stats are true, eff. I already hated that industry.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

10 Gigawatts is actually a conservative estimate considering one of the figures I found was "In 2023, bitcoin consumed about 121.13 TWh", or about 14 Gigawatts 24/7

[–] SattaRIP@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not completely useless. Iranians can use it to bypass the ridiculous number of sanctions western governments arbitrarily threw at them as those neoliberals pat themselves on the back for making the situaton worse. The dollar loses its centralization and I consider that a good thing.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is a big part of it. Its about decentralization. Currently it has a massive environmental impact, but as renewable energy and better cooling technology develops, decentralized cryptocurrencies could be better than fossil fuel invested banks.

The decentralized nature does mean that sometimes criminals can use it, but some countries will consider you a criminal based on the color of your skin.

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There are already cryptocurrencies with barely a fraction of the energy use of Bitcoin.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Like my Excel spreadsheet!

[–] mattyroses@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

Well, yeah.

A blockchain is nothing more really than a database.

The use case is when I don't want or have a trusted keeper of that data.

See, if it's your excel spreadsheet, how do I know that you're not going to change the values on it? For some things that doesn't matter - but for things like funds between different parties, etc, that can be a big issue.

Traditionally this has worked by having a trusted third party - a bank, a court, a escrow company, etc. But all these require lots of effort to have as well, and can be bad actors.

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Once people realize how unsustainable Bitcoins economical scheme is, some of them will get more popular.
Don't get me started on all the other issues Bitcoin has...

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] far_university1990@reddthat.com 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Exact number = sciecnce, you not see? Releasing paper with those number in 3 week. /s

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Starski@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

"Checkers"

"I think you mean checkmate, dumbass"

[–] PointyFluff@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Of course come racist on twitter can't math...

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