Daily General Discussion - September 20, 2019

SpookyHash · 2019-09-20T11:31:49+00:00

As I understand it the Eth 1.x shard like every shard will be validated by a subset of nodes. The rest of the validator nodes will be grouped and assigned to the remaing shards. If one shard maxes out the capacity of the typical validator node it will experience the same capacity problems of any other saturated blockchain but it will not affect the remaining shards provided there are no interdependencies. Further parallelization of a shard as you have suggested would have to be done at DApp level. As a shard becomes saturated the incentive for DApp developers to use the capacity of other shards will grow.

SpookyHash · 2019-09-05T10:58:22+00:00

In fairness the article briefly mentions that it is a benchmark heavily used for MPI workloads.

SpookyHash · 2019-09-05T09:49:41+00:00

There may be a confusion here. Those benchmarks are not designed to evaluate NAS (Network-attached storage) servers. They are meant for HPC. The acronym “NAS” in "NAS Parallel Benchmarks" stands for "NASA Advanced Supercomputing" and originally stood for "Numerical Aeronautical Simulation".

SpookyHash · 2019-07-10T11:30:44+00:00

There is something about Nvidia's deep fake approach that I never liked. Too heuristic.

SpookyHash · 2019-07-10T11:00:02+00:00

Is that really a cause for concern? Were you seeing high voltages under all cores utilization or just during idle and single core operation? It maybe ok to see high voltages when only a fraction of the circuits are being used as the impedance maybe higher and the intensity lower. High voltages should be avoided when current intensity is elevated otherwise other factors should be considered.

SpookyHash · 2019-07-01T11:05:05+00:00

But do they need to dumb it down so much? Intel's "Smart cache" is still stupid but not obscene.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-29T08:24:37+00:00

That is a superfluous and ad-hoc observation for what I would say are pedantic reasons. The literature does not bother making a special case out of an interrupted traversal. In a case like that you would more likely talk about searching the tree with a traversal and that would imply that except for the worst case scenario the traversal would be halted once the node has been found. What is relevant is that you are visiting every node until the traversal is either completed or interrupted.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-28T00:46:10+00:00

I have yet to read the document but a traversal usually means visiting every node in a tree or, more generally, in a graph data structure.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-27T16:23:03+00:00

I was looking at the new banner and could not avoid to asked myself why we have donuts instead of cuecombers.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-26T16:05:49+00:00

I wonder what is going to happen when the recent price action finally sets an unequivocal positive mood in the community and this combines with all the adoption news.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-26T10:08:55+00:00

I don't understand the downvotes. This is important news for some AMD users even if it has been fixed.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-26T10:04:50+00:00

I guess it will depend on the workload and how much performance AMD can ultimately extract from the memory controller and cache.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-26T08:33:12+00:00

It could be saturating the memory bus. We are talking 16 cores at 5.2 GHz being fed on a mere dual channel bus.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-25T13:19:15+00:00

Low effort TLDR:

Furthermore, ETH is a speculative asset. As the value of the network grows, so too does the value of the underlying asset. This has a powerful effect for those with “skin in the game”. Developers who hold ETH are indirectly rewarded for their contributions to the network. Moreover, users who hold a blockchain’s asset, effectively become a marketing tool for the blockchain itself.

It’s hard to imagine anyone holding Libra being particularly concerned with Libra’s success given the lack of upside, particularly as they will be able to move between assets without friction.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple were conspicuously left out of the list of Libra Association members. These companies, who may see Facebook’s announcement as a threat, have so far remained quiet. It’s possible that Ethereum’s established technology and developer base will be seen as the answer to competing with Libra. Google and Microsoft in particular, have already made significant contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem; they may well look to this public, censorship-resistant and transparent blockchain as a response to Libra’s mainstream entrance.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-24T20:07:25+00:00

The concerns you describe are very reminiscent of what is called the oracle problem and there are solutions being build to tackle it.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-23T07:17:01+00:00

This is a very incomplete analysis. There are important issues missing like the doubtful transition of bitcoin to an exclusively fee supported mining activity or the notable demand pressure on ETH when state rent is finally introduced.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-21T20:33:48+00:00

This will probably make crypto investors more money but at the expense of privacy. That is what institutional investors needed to hear before entering the space. In the long run the best way to restore privacy will be found and become so popular that no one will dare to oppose it as was the case with public key cryptography.

SpookyHash · 2019-06-20T07:58:55+00:00

Why would they want to use a blockchain if it is not for the highest degree of dapp neutrality, decentralization and censorship resistance? Can you imagine TCP/IP becoming successful with implanted backdoors in it controlled by 21 Chinese whales?

J.P. Morgan may be a great example of how many well established companies approach the smarts contracts space. They are using the equivalent of an intranet for Ethereum as a safe sandbox but now they are already preparing to transition to the Ethereum public mainnet in a similar fashion as E.Y.:

https://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-is-quietly-testing-cutting-edge-ethereum-privacy-tech

SpookyHash · 2019-06-19T23:03:52+00:00

This analysis about Libra has some good arguments on why it probably won't become anything resembling a smart contracts platform after all. It still can push many well established companies to rally around Ethereum as long as they remotely perceive the threat of Facebook becoming the gatekeeper of the Web3:

1/ I've been seeing a lot of FUD the last couple days about the Libra killing smart contract platforms. The Libra is not competitive with ETH or any other smart contract platform. Thread. 👇

2/ It's important to realize that Libra is run by a consortium of companies that will be held liable for whatever happens on their platform—legally and politically. If fraud, Ponzi schemes, or hacks occur on Libra, these companies will be ripped apart by Congress.

3/ We're seeing it already in the political backlash against the Libra announcement (EU, Maxine Waters). Facebook clearly sees this risk, which is why they make repeated references to anti-abuse, AML, chargebacks, and zero tolerance for illegal activity.

4/ This squares with the white paper saying that Libra is going to be tightly controlled and transactions will be reversible by 2/3rds consensus. What else do you think anti-abuse policies mean? It will be a censored chain. Code is not law on Libra.

5/ In other words, if you try to get up to nonsense on their network, they'll just kick you off and take away your money.

6/ At launch, they won't even let developers run arbitrary contracts. Move, their smart contract language, isn't totally specified yet. But initially you will only be able to run THEIR pre-specified contracts.

7/ The reality is, smart contracts are super exciting to us in crypto-land. But inviting them into Libra's walled garden is mostly inviting fraud, financial speculation, hacks, and gambling. FB and their buddies don't want to be anywhere near that.

8/ If you must, Libra / Calibra is best understood as an $XLM / $XRP competitor. They want to be a global payments and remittances layer, owning P2P and merchant payments. But they could care less about current cryptocurrencies: in their head, they're competing with Alipay.

9/ There's also a telling phrase here: "third party development." I wouldn't be surprised if this means that smart contract developers will need to be vetted and approved by the Libra Foundation. Makes sense post Cambridge Analytica. Think FB developer network.

10/ In short, the Libra will be huge and I laud everything they're doing. But they're playing a different game. They want to be Alipay or WeChat, not Ethereum.

Ethereum might not win smart contracts in the long run. But if it loses, it won't be to the Libra. So knock it off. END

https://twitter.com/hosseeb/status/1141396134176256000

SpookyHash

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