(date: 2024-02-17 00:15:15)
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/nyregion/trump-civil-fraud-trial-ruling.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Bruce Schneier blog
It uses black beans for color and seaweed for flavor.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/friday-squid-blogging-vegan-squid-ink-pasta.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/alexei-navalny-dies-russia-putin/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://developer.oculus.com/blog/introducing-app-lab-a-new-way-to-distribute-oculus-quest-apps/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/23/20881032/facebook-ctrl-labs-acquisition-neural-interface-armband-ar-vr-deal Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Julia Evans blog
https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/02/16/popular-git-config-options/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, from: Robert Reich’s blog
A big part of why the public isn’t crediting Biden
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/corporate-soaring-profits-are-from Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
It’s ridiculous for the CEO of Xbox to argue that iOS should have similar rules and policies to Windows, when Xbox — another platform from the same company — has rules that are, if anything, more restrictive and exclusive than iOS.
https://daringfireball.net/2024/02/phil_spencer_puts_apples_money_where_his_mouth_is Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-16, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Rory Rory Cellan-Jones has been one of my favourite journalists ever since I was the Observer’s TV critic in the 1980s and 1990s. On Wednesday afternoon he was in Cambridge at his alma mater Jesus College, and when we were … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/friday-14-february-2024/39138/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-15, from: Om Malik blog
I have been away visiting my parents in Delhi, India. I went not only to check in on their health, but also to get a chance to celebrate their sixty years together, along with my siblings. It was a short, packed trip. I got to spend time not only with my parents and my siblings, …
https://om.co/2024/02/15/travel-tech-notes-delhi-edition/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-15, updated: 2024-02-13, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Good essay on software bloat and the insecurities it causes.
The world ships too much code, most of it by third parties, sometimes unintended, most of it uninspected. Because of this, there is a huge attack surface full of mediocre code. Efforts are ongoing to improve the quality of code itself, but many exploits are due to logic fails, and less progress has been made scanning for those. Meanwhile, great strides could be made by paring down just how much code we expose to the world. This will increase time to market for products, but legislation is around the corner that should force vendors to take security more seriously…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/on-the-insecurity-of-software-bloat.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-15, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
At a hillside cemetery near the central Texas town of Gatesville, Sergeant Richard Rudd was finally laid to rest, nearly 80 years after he was killed in action. Attendance at the burial last December was light, as the late infantryman had few close relatives. The Army Honor Guard presented Rudd’s grand-niece with a folded flag and spoke the words repeated at countless military memorials: “On behalf of the president of the United States, the United States Army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”
https://steady.substack.com/p/final-honors-for-a-fallen-hero Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-15, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Sometimes a single very big picture is worth many thousands of words
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-really-big-picture Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-14, updated: 2024-02-16, from: Daring Fireball
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3TkhmivNzt Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-14, updated: 2024-02-15, from: Bruce Schneier blog
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/upcoming-speaking-engagements-34.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-14, updated: 2024-02-13, from: Bruce Schneier blog
The winner of the Best Paper Award at Crypto this year was a significant improvement to lattice-based cryptanalysis.
This is important, because a bunch of NIST’s post-quantum options base their security on lattice problems.
I worry about standardizing on post-quantum algorithms too quickly. We are still learning a lot about the security of these systems, and this paper is an example of that learning.
News story.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/improving-the-cryptanalysis-of-lattice-based-public-key-algorithms.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-14, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, There’s so much hate and nastiness in public life these days — by “public life,” I mean anyone who is known to the broad public, including politicians, celebrities, athletes, actors, writers, painters, and journalists — that it’s probably easy for you to come up with people in public life you detest. (My list would include Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Kari Lake, for example.)
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/office-hours-a-valentines-day-question Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-14, from: John Naughton’s online diary
On the beach One of my grandsons on a Kerry beach on an Easter Sunday morning. Quote of the Day ”Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-14-february-2024/39130/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, from: Robert Reich’s blog
Friends, Late last night, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen gave a remarkable speech on the Senate floor, condemning the government of Benjamin Netanyahu for deliberately blocking aid to civilians in Gaza. Van Hollen said: “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true: That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals. … Every one of them [officials at humanitarian relief organizations] has stated that their organizations have never experienced a humanitarian disaster as dire and terrible as the world is witnessing in Gaza.”
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/children-in-gaza-why-arent-we-stopping Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, updated: 2024-02-13, from: Bruce Schneier blog
The paperback version of A Hacker’s Mind has just been published. It’s the same book, only a cheaper format.
But—and this is the real reason I am posting this—Amazon has significantly discounted the hardcover to $15 to get rid of its stock. This is much cheaper than I am selling it for, and cheaper even than the paperback. So if you’ve been waiting for a price drop, this is your chance.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/a-hackers-mind-is-out-in-paperback.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, updated: 2024-02-14, from: Daring Fireball
https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2024/02/13/ep-395 Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, updated: 2024-02-13, from: Daring Fireball
https://info.nylas.com/nylas-technical-demo.html?utm_source=daring-fireball&utm_medium=sponsoredemail&utm_campaign=FY24Q1-daringfireball-rssfeed&utm_content=2024-02-DSU Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, from: David Rosenthal’s blog
In early December 2022 when I wrote skeptically about the economics of Bitcoin mining in Foolish Lenders the Bitcoin “price” was around $17K. It has now climbed 153% to around $43K and, below the fold, I am still posting skeptically about the economics of mining.
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Bitcoin miners are getting a jump on an anticipated decline in revenue from the so-called halving in April, when the blockchain’s network protocol will reduce rewards for verifying transactions by half.The somewhat misleading graph of the miners HODL-ings actually shows only a 2% drop in the number of BTC from the peak in August 2022. But the “value” of those HODL-ings has risen 75% from $44.8B to $78.5B. One way of looking at it is that the mining industry started August 2022 with 1.865M BTC and, in the 18 months since mined 821,250 BTC for a total of 2,686,250 but they now have only 1.825M BTC so they must have sold 861,250, or about 5% more than they mined. Nevertheless:
Miner reserves — unsold Bitcoin held in digital wallets associated with the companies — have dropped by 8,400 tokens since the start of 2024 to 1.8 million, a level last seen in June 2021, according to data compiled by CryptoQuant. Analysts said the decrease indicates miners are selling tokens.
“Miners have begun to sell more of their coins to bolster balance sheets and fund growth capex ahead of tougher times for margins when block rewards are halved in April,” said Matthew Sigel, head of digital-asset research at VanEck. “After the halving, scale will matter even more.”Before the great EFT pump, it was generally believed that the frantic efforts to pump BTC over $30K suggested that the mining industry’s break-even point was around $30K. On 6th October BTC was $26K and the hash rate was around 412M TH/s. Lets assume that the industry was breaking even at BTC=$30K and a hash rate of 412MTH/s, so the industry’s costs were covered by 45K BTC/month or $1.35B/month. Assuming the increase in efficiency is roughly cancelled by less efficient operators entering, the hash rate is now 527 TH/s and so costs are around $1.73B. But income is around $1.94B/month so margins are around 12%.
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Why then did HUT pay $745 mln to acquire this company and its planned payments?This is a good question, given that:
One person highly familiar with USBTC told us, “without the merger, [USBTC] would have done a structured bankruptcy.”It wasn’t as if Hut 8 didn’t have problems of its own:
Hut 8’s North Bay mining facility has been non-operational for an extended period of time, and problems at its Drumheller facility “have been causing miners to fail.”And the result of the merger is a company that:
has an industry-low efficiency rate and, post halving, will produce Bitcoin at a loss of close to $20,000 per Bitcoin at current spot prices.In other words, the merged company can barely make money now and cannot survive when the industry’s income is halved in less than 3 months. This all looks like rats leaving the sinking ship with whatever they can carry. An impression reinforced by David Pan in Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 CEO Exits Three Weeks After Short-Seller Allegations :
Hut 8 Corp., one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies, named Asher Genoot to succeed Jaime Leverton as chief executive officer, three weeks after a short-seller released a report critical of its recent merger.Genoot has allegedly:
The transition is effective immediately. Genoot served as the chief operating officer and the president of US Bitcoin Corp. Miami-based US Bitcoin, which has large-scale mining facilities across the US including Texas, completed its merger with then-Canadian miner Hut 8 in late 2023.
The leadership transition comes amid increasing competition among the miners, a Bitcoin code update set to drastically reduce mining revenue in two months as well as the Jan. 18 report from short-seller J Capital Research alleging the merged company was a “pump and dump” waiting to happen. Hut 8 has disputed the claim.
abandoned several failed start-ups.His co-founder was USBTC’s CEO and is now HUT’s CSO/director and:
is a 30-year-old used-car salesman from Vancouver whose history is littered with involvement in SEC-defined pump-and-dumps, sporting share-price declines of 83%,The key inputs for profitable mining are low-cost power and state-of-the-art chips to use it as effficently as possible. Clouds are gathering over both of them.
A cryptocurrency firm has lost a bid to force BC Hydro to provide the vast amounts of power needed for its operations, upholding the provincial government’s right to pause power connections for new crypto miners.In the US, David Pan’s US Bitcoin Miners Use as Much Electricity as Everyone in Utah shows that regulators are starting to worry:
Conifex Timber Inc., a forestry firm that branched out into cryptocurrency mining, had gone to the B.C. Supreme Court to have the policy declared invalid.
But Justice Michael Tammen ruled Friday that the government’s move in December 2022 to pause new connections for cryptocurrency mining for 18 months was “reasonable” and not “unduly discriminatory.”
BC Hydro CEO Christopher O’Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centres proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity each year.
Bitcoin miners in the US are consuming the same amount of electricity as the entire state of Utah, among others, according to a new analysis by the US Energy Information Administration. And that’s considered the low end of the range of use.Globally, this increase in demand is part of a bigger picture that is concerning, as Eamon Farhat reports in Electricity Demand at Data Centers Seen Doubling in Three Years:
Electricity usage from mining operations represents 0.6% to 2.3% of all the country’s demand in 2023, according to the report released Thursday. It is the first time EIA has shared an estimate. The mining activity has generated mounting concerns from policymakers and electric grid planners about straining the grid during periods of peak demand, energy costs and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
“This estimate of U.S. electricity demand supporting cryptocurrency mining would equal annual demand ranging from more than three million to more than six million homes,” the report said.
Global electricity demand from data centers, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence could more than double over the next three years, adding the equivalent of Germany’s entire power needs, the International Energy Agency forecasts in its latest report.The first step towards stricter regulation is information collection which, as Kristoffer Tigue reports in Large cryptocurrency miners in US now have to report energy use to government has started:
There are more than 8,000 data centers globally, with about 33% in the US, 16% in Europe and close to 10% in China, with more planned. In Ireland, where data centers are developing rapidly, the IEA expects the sector to consume 32% of the country’s total electricity by 2026 compared to 17% in 2022. Ireland currently has 82 centers; 14 are under construction and 40 more are approved.
Overall global electricity demand is expected to see a 3.4% increase until 2026, the report found. The increase, however, will be more than covered by renewables, such as wind, solar and hydro, and all-time high nuclear power.
The Biden administration is now requiring some cryptocurrency producers to report their energy use following rising concerns that the growing industry could pose a threat to the nation’s electricity grids and exacerbate climate change.
The Energy Information Administration announced last week that it would start collecting energy use data from more than 130 “identified commercial cryptocurrency miners” operating in the US. The survey, which started this week, aims to get a sense of how the industry’s energy demand is evolving and where in the country cryptocurrency operations are growing fastest.
“As cryptocurrency mining has increased in the United States, concerns have grown about the energy-intensive nature of the business and its effects on the US electric power industry,” the EIA said in a new report, following the announcement. “Concerns expressed to EIA include strains to the electricity grid during periods of peak demand, the potential for higher electricity prices, as well as effects on energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.”
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A sudden freeze in Texas may have contributed to a 34% drop in the Bitcoin hash rate, as some miners were forced to curtail operations amid demand on the state’s energy grid.
Beginning on Jan. 14, temperatures in many parts of Texas dropped below freezing for one of the first times since a massive ice storm in February 2023. According to data from YCharts, the total Bitcoin network hash rate fell from more than 629 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Jan. 11 to roughly 415 EH/s on Jan. 15 — a 34% drop. The analytics site reported the hash rate increased to more than 454 EH/s on Jan. 16 as temperatures in Austin briefly rose above freezing during the day.
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Ethiopia has emerged as a rare opportunity for all firms that mine the original cryptocurrency, as climate change and power scarcity fuel a backlash against the $16 billion-a-year industry (at Bitcoin’s current price) elsewhere. But it holds special appeal for Chinese companies, which once dominated Bitcoin mining but have struggled to compete with local rivals in Texas, the current hub.The haven isn’t without its own clouds:
It is also a risky gamble, for the companies and Ethiopia alike. A succession of developing countries like Kazakhstan and Iran initially embraced Bitcoin mining, only to turn on the sector when its energy use threatened to fuel domestic discontent. China’s reign as the epicenter of Bitcoin mining came to an abrupt end in 2021, when the government banned it. Dozens of companies were forced to leave.Developing countries aren’t the only ones where miners face “domestic discontent”. Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine by Gabriel J.X. Dance reports on an example in Arkansas:
Ethiopian officials are wary of the controversy that accompanies Bitcoin mining, according to industry executives who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing government relations. Even after new generation capacity came online, almost half the population live without access to electricity, making mining a delicate topic. At the same time, it represents a potentially lucrative source of foreign-exchange earnings.
…
The reliance on abundant power is also a major vulnerability because it can put miners in competition for electricity with factories and households, exposing them to political backlash.
When Kazakzstan imposed fresh curbs and taxes on miners, “it basically killed the industry,” said Hashlabs co-founder Alen Makhmetov. Two years after the clampdown, his 10-megawatt facility there is still sitting idle.
And in an era when rising temperatures wreak havoc around the world, Bitcoin mining is increasingly seen as a contributor to global warming that doesn’t serve any productive purpose — even though miners have claimed they’re increasingly tapping clean energy. A study by United Nations University published in October estimated that two-thirds of the electricity used for Bitcoin mining in 2020 and 2021 was generated using fossil fuels.
The Arkansas Data Centers Act, popularly called the Right to Mine law, offers Bitcoin miners legal protections from communities that may not want them operating nearby. Passed just eight days after it was introduced, the law was written in part by the Satoshi Action Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Mississippi whose co-founder worked in the Trump administration rolling back Obama-era climate policies.The law ins’t popular:
A furious backlash has some lawmakers considering a statewide ban.The Satoshi Action Fund over-reached:
Despite efforts to build bipartisan support, the Satoshi fund has succeeded predominantly in red states. But in Arkansas, where the state legislature is dominated by Republicans, it is conservatives who have led calls to repeal the law, including Senator Bryan King, a poultry farmer whose district includes a property purchased by one of the companies tied to the Chinese government. He said it was not fair that the Bitcoin operators received special protections under the law, which shields them from “discriminatory industry specific regulations and taxes,” including noise ordinances and zoning restrictions.At least the Ethiopian mines don’t emit much CO2, they run on hydropower:
The opening of the GERD project increased Ethiopia’s installed generation capacity to 5.3 gigawatt, 92% of which comes from hydropower, a renewable energy source.
Once GERD is fully completed, Ethiopia’s generation capacity will double, according to Ethiopian Electric Power. It charges Bitcoin miners a fixed rate of 3.14 US cents per kilowatt hour for electricity drawn from substations, Marketing and Business Development Director Hiwot Eshetu said in an interview.
While that’s similar to the average in Texas, rates in the Lone Star State can swing wildly, Luxor’s Vera said, making profits there less predictable. In Ethiopia, the price will fall once miners connect directly to power plants, according to Hiwot.
But if the utility can make money selling power to the mines right by
the dam they have little incentive to build out the grid than could get
the power to the unserved half of the population.
As
regards the longer-term issue of access to state-of-the-art chips, it is
important to note that the best mining chips are sold by Bitmain, a
Chinese company, but manufactured at TSMC in Taiwan. There are two major
risks here. The first is that the US appears determined to prevent China
importing
leading-edge chips and the
equipment
to make them. China remains at least a
generation
and a half behind TSMC and Samsung, and reportedly has poor yields
on its leading-edge process. These restrictions could well prevent
Chinese mining companies acquiring leading-edge rigs, and might cause
TSMC problems in fab-ing Bitmain products.
Second, there is
the looming threat of a Chinese blockade or even invasion of Taiwan. Of
course, difficulties for Bitcoin miners are hardly the major impact if
these threats are made good. One might think that, even if supplies of
new mining chips were cut off, existing rigs would continue working. In
the short term they would, but there is a long history of
rigs
being obsolete after
about 18
months. So they aren’t designed or operated for longevity.
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/02/clouds-over-mines.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, updated: 2024-02-12, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Molly White—of “Web3 is Going Just Great” fame—reviews Chris Dixon’s blockchain solutions book: Read Write Own:
In fact, throughout the entire book, Dixon fails to identify a single blockchain project that has successfully provided a non-speculative service at any kind of scale. The closest he ever comes is when he speaks of how “for decades, technologists have dreamed of building a grassroots internet access provider”. He describes one project that “got further than anyone else”: Helium. He’s right, as long as you ignore the fact that Helium was providing LoRaWAN, not Internet, that by the time he was writing his book Helium hotspots had long since passed the phase where they might generate even enough tokens for their operators to merely break even, and that the network was pulling in somewhere around $1,150 in usage fees a month despite the company being valued at $1.2 billion. Oh, and that the company had widely lied to the public about its supposed big-name clients, and that its executives have been accused of hoarding the project’s token to enrich themselves. But hey, a16z sunk millions into Helium (a fact Dixon never mentions), so might as well try to drum up some new interest!…
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/molly-white-reviews-blockchain-book.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
I noticed Donald Trump will spend more time in front of a judge this week than in front of potential voters. It’s his new normal. Trump’s schedule looks like a litigious hellscape. And his calendar for the foreseeable future is more of the same. It’s all so antithetical to my belief about what kind of person should lead our great nation.
https://steady.substack.com/p/stormy-times-ahead Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-13, from: Robert Reich’s blog
His father, for whom I worked 57 years ago, would be appalled
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-disgrace-and-danger-of-robert Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-12, updated: 2024-02-12, from: Bruce Schneier blog
Matt Burgess tries to only use passkeys. The results are mixed.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/on-passkey-usability.html Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-12, from: Paolo Valdemarin’s blog
Having just started a company that primarily deals with large language models I’m occasionally thinking about the responsibilities that we have when we introduce a new AI agent in the digital space. Besides preservation of the human species, a good rule that I think we should give ourselves is “avoid bullshit”, and while this rule … Continue reading “With great responsibilities”
https://val.demar.in/2024/02/with-great-responsibilities/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-12, from: Robert Reich’s blog
The effective co-chair of the anti-democracy movement. And who’s that?
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/whos-vladimir-putins-best-friend-055 Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-12, from: John Naughton’s online diary
Everything and the kitchen sink Seen on the way back from a restaurant one night recently. Quote of the Day “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people … Continue reading
https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-12-february-2024/39122/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-11, from: Dan Rather’s Steady
While watching the Grammys last Sunday, I was delighted by a duet performed by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. They sang “Fast Car,” a hit for Chapman in 1988. I was not the only one so moved. As I have discovered, it was one of the most popular performances of the night. I am an old-school country music fan, so I was not aware of Combs’ cover of Chapman’s hit. It certainly is a reason to smile.
https://steady.substack.com/p/fast-car Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-11, from: Robert Reich’s blog
And last week’s winner.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-caption-contest-pray Save to Pocket