this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] zd9@lemmy.world 148 points 1 month 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 22 points 1 month ago (3 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 month 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 month 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.

[–] josephc@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

The real kicker is it was and is used in productive and constructive ways. It was just invisible until very recently. The ability to search for other photos of your pets in your photos app, the spam filters that keep your email (relatively) usable, the special effects tools that let artists paint out wires were all possible because of machine learning (used to refer to the subgroup of AI) and were made better by transformers.

If this same tech were released in a post-Capitalist society there would be no need for every single company to ham fistedly shove it into every product that doesn't need it.

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[–] glibg10b@lemmy.ml 58 points 1 month 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@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month 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 8 points 1 month 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 month 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 month 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.

[–] Liketearsinrain@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month 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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[–] purrtastic@lemmy.nz 52 points 1 month ago (3 children)

This is neither science nor a meme

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

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

[–] mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 5 points 1 month 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.

[–] jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip 49 points 1 month 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 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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

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

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 6 points 1 month 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 month 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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[–] SattaRIP@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 month 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 month 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 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month 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...

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

Like my Excel spreadsheet!

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[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] far_university1990@reddthat.com 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Starski@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago

"Checkers"

"I think you mean checkmate, dumbass"

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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

[–] PointyFluff@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

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

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