Deep-Sea Mining and the Race to the Bottom of the Ocean | Wil S. Hylton
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/20000-feet-under-the-sea/603040
These things are already happening. We’re about to make one of the biggest transformations that humans have ever made to the surface of the planet. We’re going to strip-mine a massive habitat, and once it’s gone, it isn’t coming back. Source: The Atlantic
Voir aussi le projet Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative : ▻https://www.dosi-project.org
#fond_océanique #nodule_polymétallique #compagnie_minière #sédiments #mining #cobalt #contamination #bactérie
Les scientifiques capturent une vidéo étonnante d’un poisson des profondeurs avec des « pieds »
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=haeD9MndkY8&feature=emb_logo
C’est le texte le plus dérangeant et puissant que j’aie lu de la semaine, notamment parce que ça nous dit où en est le capitalisme vis-à-vis de l’exploitation de la nature : c’est toujours open bar, la course à l’innovation technique mais en version pseudo-verte.
Many people imagine the seabed to be a vast expanse of sand, but it’s a jagged and dynamic landscape with as much variation as any place onshore. Mountains surge from underwater plains, canyons slice miles deep, hot springs billow through fissures in rock, and streams of heavy brine ooze down hillsides, pooling into undersea lakes.
At full capacity, these companies expect to dredge thousands of square miles a year. Their collection vehicles will creep across the bottom in systematic rows, scraping through the top five inches of the ocean floor. Ships above will draw thousands of pounds of sediment through a hose to the surface, remove the metallic objects, known as polymetallic nodules, and then flush the rest back into the water. Some of that slurry will contain toxins such as mercury and lead, which could poison the surrounding ocean for hundreds of miles. The rest will drift in the current until it settles in nearby ecosystems. An early study by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences predicted that each mining ship will release about 2 million cubic feet of discharge every day, enough to fill a freight train that is 16 miles long. The authors called this “a conservative estimate,” since other projections had been three times as high. By any measure, they concluded, “a very large area will be blanketed by sediment to such an extent that many animals will not be able to cope with the impact and whole communities will be severely affected by the loss of individuals and species.”
Scientists divide the ocean into five layers of depth. Closest to the surface is the “sunlight zone,” where plants thrive; then comes the “twilight zone,” where darkness falls; next is the “midnight zone,” where some creatures generate their own light; and then there’s a frozen flatland known simply as “the abyss.” Oceanographers have visited these layers in submersible vehicles for half a century, but the final layer is difficult to reach. It is known as the “hadal zone,” in reference to Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, and it includes any water that is at least 6,000 meters below the surface—or, in a more Vernian formulation, that is 20,000 feet under the sea. Because the hadal zone is so deep, it is usually associated with ocean trenches, but several deepwater plains have sections that cross into hadal depth.
The ISA has issued more mining licenses for nodules than for any other seabed deposit. Most of these licenses authorize contractors to exploit a single deepwater plain. Known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ, it extends across 1.7 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico—wider than the continental United States. When the Mining Code is approved, more than a dozen companies will accelerate their explorations in the CCZ to industrial-scale extraction. Their ships and robots will use vacuum hoses to suck nodules and sediment from the seafloor, extracting the metal and dumping the rest into the water. How many ecosystems will be covered by that sediment is impossible to predict. Ocean currents fluctuate regularly in speed and direction, so identical plumes of slurry will travel different distances, in different directions, on different days. The impact of a sediment plume also depends on how it is released. Slurry that is dumped near the surface will drift farther than slurry pumped back to the bottom. The circulating draft of the Mining Code does not specify a depth of discharge. The ISA has adopted an estimate that sediment dumped near the surface will travel no more than 62 miles from the point of release, but many experts believe the slurry could travel farther. A recent survey of academic research compiled by Greenpeace concluded that mining waste “could travel hundreds or even thousands of kilometers.”
▻https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-international-stateless/2019/06/f223a588-in-deep-water-greenpeace-deep-sea-mining-2019.pdf
Building a vehicle to function at 36,000 feet, under 2 million pounds of pressure per square foot, is a task of interstellar-type engineering. It’s a good deal more rigorous than, say, bolting together a rover to skitter across Mars. Picture the schematic of an iPhone case that can be smashed with a sledgehammer more or less constantly, from every angle at once, without a trace of damage, and you’re in the ballpark—or just consider the fact that more people have walked on the moon than have reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth.
While scientists struggle to reach the deep ocean, human impact has already gotten there. Most of us are familiar with the menu of damages to coastal water: overfishing, oil spills, and pollution, to name a few. What can be lost in the discussion of these issues is how they reverberate far beneath.
Maybe the greatest alarm in recent years has followed the discovery of plastic floating in the ocean. Scientists estimate that 17 billion pounds of polymer are flushed into the ocean each year, and substantially more of it collects on the bottom than on the surface. Just as a bottle that falls from a picnic table will roll downhill to a gulch, trash on the seafloor gradually makes its way toward deepwater plains and hadal trenches. After his expedition to the trenches, Victor Vescovo returned with the news that garbage had beaten him there. He found a plastic bag at the bottom of one trench, a beverage can in another, and when he reached the deepest point in the Mariana, he watched an object with a large S on the side float past his window. Trash of all sorts is collecting in the hadal—Spam tins, Budweiser cans, rubber gloves, even a mannequin head.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the impact of trash on aquatic life.
▻https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html
Microbes that flourish on plastic have ballooned in number, replacing other species as their population explodes in a polymer ocean.
If it seems trivial to worry about the population statistics of bacteria in the ocean, you may be interested to know that ocean microbes are essential to human and planetary health. About a third of the carbon dioxide generated on land is absorbed by underwater organisms, including one species that was just discovered in the CCZ in 2018. The researchers who found that bacterium have no idea how it removes carbon from the environment, but their findings show that it may account for up to 10 percent of the volume that is sequestered by oceans every year.
“There are more than a million microbes per milliliter of seawater,” he said, “so the chance of finding new antibiotics in the marine environment is high.” McCarthy agreed. “The next great drug may be hidden somewhere deep in the water,” he said. “We need to get to the deep-sea organisms, because they’re making compounds that we’ve never seen before. We may find drugs that could be used to treat gout, or rheumatoid arthritis, or all kinds of other conditions.”
Marine biologists have never conducted a comprehensive survey of microbes in the hadal trenches. The conventional tools of water sampling cannot function at extreme depth, and engineers are just beginning to develop tools that can. Microbial studies of the deepwater plains are slightly further along—and scientists have recently discovered that the CCZ is unusually flush with life.
Venter has been accused of trying to privatize the human genome, and many of his critics believe his effort to create new organisms is akin to playing God. He clearly doesn’t have an aversion to profit-driven science, and he’s not afraid to mess with nature—yet when I asked him about the prospect of mining in deep water, he flared with alarm. “We should be very careful about mining in the ocean,” he said. “These companies should be doing rigorous microbial surveys before they do anything else. We only know a fraction of the microbes down there, and it’s a terrible idea to screw with them before we know what they are and what they do.”
As a group, they have sought to position DeepGreen as a company whose primary interest in mining the ocean is saving the planet. They have produced a series of lavish brochures to explain the need for a new source of battery metals, and Gerard Barron, the CEO, speaks with animated fervor about the virtues of nodule extraction.
His case for seabed mining is straightforward. Barron believes that the world will not survive if we continue burning fossil fuels, and the transition to other forms of power will require a massive increase in battery production. He points to electric cars: the batteries for a single vehicle require 187 pounds of copper, 123 pounds of nickel, and 15 pounds each of manganese and cobalt. On a planet with 1 billion cars, the conversion to electric vehicles would require several times more metal than all existing land-based supplies—and harvesting that metal from existing sources already takes a human toll.
L’enfer sur Terre, que cette histoire de seabed mining puisse être considérée comme écolo, de même qu’un milliard de bagnoles « vertes » !
Mining companies may promise to extract seabed metal with minimal damage to the surrounding environment, but to believe this requires faith. It collides with the force of human history, the law of unintended consequences, and the inevitability of mistakes. I wanted to understand from Michael Lodge how a UN agency had made the choice to accept that risk.
“Why is it necessary to mine the ocean?” I asked him.
He paused for a moment, furrowing his brow. “I don’t know why you use the word necessary,” he said. “Why is it ‘necessary’ to mine anywhere? You mine where you find metal.”
#extractivisme #extractivisme_marin #mer #océan #eau #mine #capitalisme_vert #tourisme_de_l'extrême par nos amis les #milliardaires #biologie_de_synthèse aussi #microbes #antibiotiques et un gros #beurk
Top green #mining projects
▻https://hackernoon.com/top-green-mining-projects-a3127a88f8b1?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
Top Green Mining Crypto ProjectsThe advantage of bubbles, when they pop, is that they make it possible to do a big spring cleaning. And, on the side of the mining services provider, we can say that the purge was severe.Why that?Let’s go back a few months ago…- The sector has been the target of many scams (it has been highly targeted, as have been the exchange and #blockchain projects). - The price of cryptocurrencies has fallen sharply, making unprofitable most of the mines that had been built in a hurry, with machines that are not very efficient and use a huge amount of energy.- Mining has been criticized in all major media for its impact on the climate, has been hijacked by Javascript hacks on contaminated sites to unknowingly mine using the computers of the Internet users.- Etc.In (...)
WTF is Cuckoo Cycle PoW algorithm that attract projects like Cortex and Grin?
▻https://hackernoon.com/wtf-is-cuckoo-cycle-pow-algorithm-that-attract-projects-like-cortex-and-
WTF is Cuckoo Cycle PoW algorithm that attract projects like Grin and Cortex?In 2017, the #cryptocurrency rage reached to the highest point when Bitcoin surged to USD19,783, many speculators and miners started to invest an enormous amount of money into #mining hardware and chips hoping to get on the craze. Cryptocurrency mining was originally designed to be doable with general-purpose computers. Yet with the increase in competition to the limited resources, miners have been seeking an effective way to improve their chances.Application-specific integrated circuit chips, known as ASIC, has taken over the mining market since. ASIC are chips that are designed with a singular purpose. For cryptocurrency mining, these chips are built into specifically designed motherboards and power supplies to (...)
Pressure Mounts for #ethereum Developers as ASIC Miners Eagerly Await Next Week’s Hardfork
▻https://hackernoon.com/pressure-mounts-for-ethereum-developers-as-asic-miners-eagerly-await-nex
Pressure Mounts for Ethereum Developers as ASIC Miners Begin Dominating HashratesEthereum’s hardfork scheduled for later this month will likely have some irreversible ramifications. Ethereum #mining will never be the same again — and its not because of the fallen profit margins, nor is it because of some silly dispute to create Ethereum Cash. This is a planned event supported by almost the entire Ethereum community — minus the miners. We all knew that mining Ethereum would soon come to an end; it’s in Ethereum’s roadmap to switch to a Proof of Stake consensus. And although Ethereum will still be mineable until that fateful day in which PoS comes, some decisions made for this hardfork will have dire consequences for Ethereum miners.Ethereum’s Significance in the GPU Mining IndustryEthereum was (...)
51% Attacks for Rent — The Consequence of a Liquid #mining Market
▻https://hackernoon.com/51-attacks-for-rent-the-consequence-of-a-liquid-mining-market-c37d9ca840
51% Attacks for Rent — The Consequence of a Liquid Mining MarketIn order to remain decentralized, cryptocurrencies using a proof of work system must not allow a single party to control the majority of total hashing power.But as the global pool of hashing power grows more liquid, cryptocurrencies need to pass another important test. They must be able to resist an attack from the total rentable global hashing power for their specific algorithm. Otherwise, arbitrageurs may find it financially attractive to rent hashing power in order to perform 51% attacks.There are a few things preventing this from happening:Algorithm-specific miners — Many rigs are optimized for a certain hashing algorithm, and switching to another, e.g. SHA-256 → X11, is unfeasible.Illiquid mining market — Most of the global (...)
How Much Longer Can Our Grid Handle #bitcoin Miners Demands ?
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-much-longer-can-our-grid-handle-bitcoin-miners-demands-15b4bd60d9ba?
“Eden GeoPower” may have the answer.Image Credit phys.org2018 emerged as an emotional rollercoaster for the crypto market. With Bitcoin prices surging as high as $11,235 and bottoming out at around $3,691, it was a year to remember for investors and miners alike. What remained a constant was crypto’s relentless energy demands. In some cases, the Bitcoin network consumed nearly as much electricity as the nation of Ireland according to a study by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries. De Vries estimates that the Bitcoin network consumes “at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity currently, and potentially 7.67 gigawatts in the future.” So the question remains, is there a renewable energy solution to offset these extensive costs in the future of crypto mining?A look into what causes Bitcoin #mining to (...)
Summary of #bitmain #lawsuit
▻https://hackernoon.com/summary-of-bitmain-lawsuit-ed3a3412c965?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
Gor Gevorkyan v. Bitmain, Inc., Bitmain Technologies, Ltd. And DOES 1 to 10A lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California against Bitmain on 11/19/2018. See ▻https://www.scribd.com/document/393971649/Bitmain-Class-ActionIn a brief summary, the Plaintiff alleged that Bitmain marketed and sold ASIC miners that were preconfigured to use the customers’ electricity to generate crypto for Bitmain’s own benefit.The Plaintiff bought his ASIC in January 2018, it was hard to configure, and it came pre-configured to operate in full power mode, at which time it mined for the benefit of Bitmain, using the Plaintiff’s electricity. The complaint alleges there are over 100 Class members and the amount in controversy exceeds $5 Million.Plaintiff’s first count is that Bitmain used unfair (...)
AI in Action : #mining & #energy
▻https://hackernoon.com/ai-in-action-mining-energy-940a42c5cb0a?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting the many applications of Artificial Intelligence.The “extractive industries” as they’re sometimes called, Mining and Energy, were the first truly global vertical, and continue to span the globe in the pursuit of access to natural resources. AI can be of great service in innumerable ways in this field. Here’s a few examples:Risk ManagementI was talking to a pipeline company last year about risk management. At the time I was selling a tablet-based inspection system. “Data collection is not our problem” I was told. “we have lots of data automatically collected via SCADA — our need is to interpret this data effectively.” They had a great deal of data being collected along the hundreds of miles of pipeline, but were having trouble processing it (...)
Very interesting talk I just watched on Air #Mozilla (or #airmo as ...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/6966848
Very interesting talk I just watched on Air #Mozilla (or #airmo as we like to call it):
#Computer #Security In The Past, Present and #Future, with Mikko Hypponen ▻https://air.mozilla.org/computer-security-in-the-past-present-and-future-with-mikko-hypponen
Definitely worth a look if things like #virus, #worm, #trojan, #ransomware, unsolicited #blockchain #mining (heck, he even talks about blockchain applications and security a bit) are anything that peek your interest!
Reportage: Das passiert, wenn Bitcoin-Miner deine Stadt übernehmen...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/6897029
Reportage: Das passiert, wenn Bitcoin-Miner deine Stadt übernehmen
#bernehmen #bitcoin #das #deine #energie #kryptowahrungen #linkschleuder #miner #mining #passiert #reportage #smartcity #stadt #strom #wenn posted by pod_feeder
Congolese block export of raw metals to #China - venture with Chinese firms told to process #copper and #cobalt
▻https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2017-10-10-congolese-block-export-of-raw-metals-to-china #Africa #minerals #mining #development #Congo
À l’heure des data center détenus par la NSA ou les GAFAM, bref de la (re)concentration informatique, de l’hyper-concentration, l’argument des #bitcoin et comme « #pair_à_pair » ou outils de désintermédiation laisse rêveur. On peut déjà noter que le bitcoin est une régression puisqu’il cherche à contourner la gestion politique de la #monnaie (alors que cela a toujours été le cas et qu’on en est de plus en plus conscient) en revalorisant d’une manière (néo)classique, ou plutôt capitaliste, la « preuve de travail » jugée sur le temps-énergie (#Proof_of_work).
Ne faudrait-il pas plutôt parler de ré-intermédiation ? Une transformation du système d’intermédiaires, très certainement au bénéfice des propriétaires (de machines, d’énergie, de compétences logicielles, des terrains nécessaires à la production de machines mais aussi des capitaux nécessaires à enrôler-salarialiser les travailleurs indispensables).
#Bitcoin_Mining Farm Build Out in Iceland - Genesis #Mining
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-mcSOGolM
Je me mets de coté toute une série de critiques qui pointent la consommation énergétique (la production d’ #énergie, encore une industrie connu pour son caractère #décentralisé et #désintermédié) et autres problèmes générés par ces technologies :
Consommation d’énergie (et de matière) :
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/131228
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/424376#message424451
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/355322#message355337
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/137297
►http://seenthis.net/messages/137297#message137543
éventuelles « solutions » à ce problème (ce sont plus des contournements) :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/280500
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/312332
Des critiques plus globales :
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/279395#message279408
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/135202
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/218268
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/468936
Pour se rendre compte de la désintermédiation et dé-concentration du Bitcoin ces vidéo sont sympas :
A LOOK INSIDE AMERICA’S LARGEST #BITCOIN_MINING_FARM
Life Inside a Secret Chinese #Bitcoin_Mine
Et ces articles écrits à un moment où moins d’un millième des internautes utilisent le bitcoin ou une technologie similaire
▻http://www.e-ducat.fr/cop21-et-blockchain
Les participants à la Cop21 sont peut être majoritairement persuadés par le discours du lobby bancaire que le minage des bitcoins est un gaspillage énergétique.
Quand est il vraiment ?
La puissance de calcul totale du réseau est de 500 milliards de Mhash/sec (à la date d’aujourd’hui, 28 novembre 2015).
L’efficacité du matériel de minage peut être estimée autour de 2000 Mhash/J.
La #consommation_électrique totale du réseau bitcoin, disponible dans le monde entier, se situe donc autour de 250 MJ/sec = 250 MWatt, c’est à dire l’équivalent de 100 000 maisons aux Etats-Unis.
A titre de comparaison, il existe environ deux millions de distributeurs de billets de banque dans le monde, chacun consommant en moyenne 200 Watts, même si les modèles les plus récents affichent une consommation théorique de 70 Watts (source : diebold.com).
Au final, les seuls ATMs (sans compter les réseaux et data centers auxquels ils sont connectés) consomment donc 400 Mwatts.
Si l’ impression des billets de banque sur papier de haute qualité et leur transport en camions blindés sont pris en compte, l’adoption de masse de Bitcoin comme cash électronique permettrait de diviser l’empreinte carbone des systèmes de paiement par trois ou quatre.
Avec un coût moyen de l’ #électricité aux US de 10 cents par Kilowattheure en 2015, on obtient un coût de 25 000 US dollars pour 150 bitcoins générés par heure, soit un coût de “production” de 167 dollars par bitcoin (environ 157 €), environ la moitié du prix de marché des bitcoins à la même date. La différence correspond à la prime d’utilité, présente et future, attribuée aux bitcoins.
▻http://www.latribune.fr/technos-medias/20131203trib000799051/bitcoins-une-vraie-planche-a-bruler-de-l-electricite.html
L’économiste nord-américain Alex Tabarrok signale sur le site Marginal Revolution qu’avec la flambée du cours du bitcoin, ces opérations coûtent en conséquence de plus en plus cher. Il rappelle ainsi :
« En avril, quand les bitcoins s’échangeaient environ 100 dollars, la consommation d’électricité des ’mineurs’ de bitcoins atteignait le niveau stupéfiant de 1000 mégawatts/heure par jour, assez pour fournir de assez pour fournir de l’énergie à 31.000 foyers américains. »
Cela représentait également 150.000 dollars par jour, en prenant en compte le tarif moyen de 15 cents par #kilowatt-heure et sur la base de 650 watts consommés par opération de minage.
Huit mois plus tard, suivant ces estimations, ce coût a été multiplié par… 100 ! Au 3 décembre 2013, le coût en électricité estimé par la plateforme précédemment citée Blockchain pour le minage est en effet de 15,3 millions de dollars au cours des 24 heures précédentes. Un coût global supporté par chaque internaute qui participe aux opérations de minage. Entre temps, le cours du Bitcoin a lui aussi explosé, dépassant la barre des 1.000 dollars fin novembre.
#capitalisme #travail #preuve_de_travail #PoW #cryptocurrency
#namecoin #Ethereum #économie #p2p #Proof_of_stake
Un autre élément intéressant, la taille de la blockchaine (ce qui conditionne la possibilité de participer à sa surveillance et à sa conservation, puisque plus elle est grosse plus elle demande des capacités de calcul et de stockage importantes. Donc si on ne peut pas faire ces opérations on est obligé de passer par un #intermédiaire) :
Cette page enregistre son évolution, on voit qu’en 2013 elle pesait environ 9Go et qu’aujourd’hui, en 2016, elle pèse environ 62Go, son évolution semble suivre une croissance exponentielle :
►https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&t
Discussions sur le sujet :
▻http://linuxfr.org/users/gof/journaux/comment-fonctionne-bitcoin#comment-1469644
▻https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=146830.msg1558859#msg1558859
Salut anemol,
Pour l’instant, la blockchain augmente avec un maximum de 1Mo par block toutes les ~10min c.a.d. maximum 52Go par an (hors indexages, c.a.d uniquement les fichiers block{NNN}.dat. Avec l’index il faut au moins multiplier par 2).
Des discussions sont en cours pour augmenter cette taille, car cela limite le nombre de transactions possible par block.
Il y a dans le document initial de satoshi, une méthode pour effacer toutes les adresses déja dépensées mais elle n’est pas encore implementée (merkle pruning). Cette methode pourrait réduire de beaucoup la taille de la blockchain, mais dans tous les cas ne concernera pas non plus les utilisateurs normaux.
A long terme les utilisateurs n’auront plus de client sauvegardant la blockchain.
Les noeuds ayant une blockchain seront des super-noeuds gérés de manière décentralisés, un peu comme les exit-nodes sous Tor, ou les tracker bittorrent.
Seules des personnes avec un bon serveur pourront faire tourner un noeud.
Il y a quelques calculs sur cette page pour plus de détails : ▻https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability
Sur un autre point il y a aussi les critiques de Christian Grothoff
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/358071
►https://gnunet.org/diss-wachs
6.9 Related Work and Comparison
6.9.2 Namecoin
With #Namecoin it is possible to square #Zooko ’s triangle and achieve all three properties of #Zooko_s_triangle at the same time: memorable, global and secure names. Names are globally unique since with the blockchain a consensus in the network about the current state of the system and therefore all registered names exist. #Names are memorable since they are explicitly chosen that way when registering these names. But with initial cheap cost when bootstrapping the system, the problem of name squatting exists. Initially the registration cost of names are low and therefore early adopters register names with the expectation to sell these names when the system is popular. So with Namecoin, names are an #economic object possessed by an owner and are object of trade and economic behavior. The system is said to be #secure, since with a majority of benign nodes in the network, the consensus of the block chain cannot be attacked. This assumption is only valid with an adversary model weaker than the adversary model used for this work. Note that our adversary model is not a far-fetched assumption in this context: as we saw with recent revelations about a single mining pool in the #Bitcoin network possessing more than 51% of the computational power in the network [Far14a], it is conceivable that a nation-state can muster more resources than the small number of other entities that participate in the system, especially for systems used as an alternative in places where censorship is encountered or during the bootstrapping of the network, when only a small number of users participate.
#Security can also be lowered by the concept of the Namecoin resolution process: a client resolving a name has to be in possession of the complete block chain to validate a name. The complete block chain can be large in size and therefore not be available on devices with restricted resources. These devices would then have to rely on third party resolvers and so creating a trusted third party, which may not be trustworthy or may be manipulated, just like in #DNS.
Deux autres éléments concernant les Bitcoin et la blockchain.
D’une part les plus gros et les plus puissants des intermédiaires, de l’informatique ou du #système_bancaire, s’y mettent :
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/462720
►http://seenthis.net/messages/441752
IBM, Intel, and Cisco as well as the London Stock Exchange Group and big-name banks JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and State Street [...]
Marley Gray, who oversees blockchain work at Microsoft. People like Gray and Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne believe the blockchain can also close loopholes in the market that allow #traders to game the current system on Wall Street
ou encore
▻http://www.itespresso.fr/blobkchain-banques-bitcoin-loin-107942.html
La question se pose à propos de ces neuf banques d’investissement qui se sont associées à l’entreprise FinTech new-yorkaise R3CEV pour explorer les usages de la blockchain dans l’industrie des services financiers.
Barclays, #Goldman_Sachs, BBVA, UBS, Credit Suisse, #JP_Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, State Street…
et
R3 is a financial innovation firm that leads the Distributed Ledger Group (DLG), a consortium partnership with 42 of the world’s leading banks, to design and deliver advanced distributed ledger technologies to global financial markets.
L’autre aspect, c’est que, pour le moment, ce n’est pas très efficace (malgré toute l’électricité et la puissance de calcule consommés) :
La blockchain tuera-t-elle vraiment les banques ? - 10 novembre 2015
►http://blockchainfrance.net/2015/11/10/la-blockchain-tuera-t-elle-vraiment-les-banques
En réalité, la menace que représente la blockchain pour les #banques reste très limitée à court terme pour une raison simple : le bitcoin n’est pas capable de traiter plus 7 #transactions par seconde, là où un système comme #Visa peut en traiter jusqu’à 20 000 par seconde . Cette restriction inhérente au protocole actuel du bitcoin constitue un réel blocage.
Ce n’est toutefois pas une fatalité : il existe des pistes pour augmenter cette limite des 7 transactions/seconde : par exemple, celle proposée par le développeur bitcoin Gavin Andresen qui propose de basculer sur une nouvelle version du bitcoin en augmentant la taille des blocs. ▻https://actualite.housseniawriting.com/technologie/2015/08/29/le-probleme-qui-menace-le-bitcoin/7756 D’autres développeurs estiment plus judicieux de développer des side chains, c’est à dire des chaines fonctionnant en parallèle à la principale, afin d’augmenter le volume de transactions pouvant être traité.
Don’t believe the #MEDIA hype about striking mine workers in #South_Africa
▻http://africasacountry.com/dont-believe-the-media-hype-about-striking-mine-workers-in-south-af
The #platinum strike led by new trade union Association of #mining and Construction Workers Union (AMCU), is now over four months long, making it the longest strike in the history of South Africa. The majority of the country’s English language newspapers depict the strike as a result of the greedy and unethical leadership of #AMCU […]
The Ninja Miners of Mongolia | The Diplomat
▻http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/the-ninja-miners-of-mongolia/?img=8#postImage
The rugged landscape in #Zaamarr, 350 kilometers west of Ulan Bator in #Mongolia, is sown with so many holes that it may cave in at any moment. Here, in the shadows of the big #mining companies, thousands of “ninjas” labor relentlessly. The workers are named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because of the green plastic pans they carry on their backs. Mining has become a growth business, with about 100,000 Mongolians joining the industry in the past five years. Many lost their jobs during the country’s transition from Communism and initially became traditional herders. But two devastating winters, known as dzuds, wiped out a third of Mongolia’s livestock in 2001 and 2002, and so thousands of families joined the #gold_rush, scouring sites rejected by large mining companies for quartz or crumbs of gold. Ninjas have the potential to earn between $5 and $10 a day, often more than teachers, doctors and government officials.
The work is harsh. “If it rains, you’re hungry. If it snows, you’re hungry. If you are sick, you’re hungry. And while you are hungry, you need money to eat. If you’re alive, you can work,” says one female miner.
C’est l’occasion ou jamais de rappeler que nous avons publié sur visions carto ancienne formule, il y a tout juste un an, une très belle contribution sur ce sujet (par deux auteures qui ont vécu en Mongolie et travaillé avec les Ninja pendant plusieurs années - et qui connaissent fort bien le sujet)
Autour des mines mongoles, croissance, pollution et ninjas
vendredi 19 avril 2013, par Coralie Griell et Marie-Alix Comerre
►http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-04-19-Autour-des-mines-mongoles-croissance-pollution-et
Comme dans de nombreux pays émergents, l’écosystème de la Mongolie subit de plein fouet les effets de ses progrès économiques, essentiellement dûs à l’exploitation « anarchique » des nombreux gisements de minerais dispersés sur un territoire équivalent à deux fois et demie celui de la France.
L’essor de l’activité minière, depuis vingt ans, représente à la fois un remarquable potentiel économique et une grande menace environnementale. Cette métamorphose est porteuse d’autant de promesses que de dangers. La croissance est très élevée, ce qui permet au pays d’espérer un relâchement de la forte emprise qu’exercent sur elle ses deux puissants voisins – la Chine et la Russie – et une plus grande « visibilité » sur la scène internationale.
The poor bosses
▻http://africasacountry.com/poor-bosses
Miners at multinational #Lonmin platinum mine at Marikana in Rustenburg, #South_Africa, speaking to (South African) Sunday Times reporter Lucky Biyase: ‘Whenever we ask for a wage increase, these companies plead poverty and threaten us with retrenchments. This is because they don’t want to pay money to black people. Why work when you don’t get [...]
#bitcoin anyone ? - Roelof Roscam Abbing (nettime-l)
▻http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/7367
We can see how the design of Bitcoin as a mathematical framework does not make it free of politics. For in it’s design it also contains certain (unconscious) political ideas about society that are grounded in anarcho-capitalism. The mathematical framework has thus for not shown to be capable of preventing the extremely quick formation of potentially disruptive monopolies in a system that was designed to be neutral and decentralized.
The idea that setting the right technical parameters will remove the necessity for supervision and accountability is thus incorrect. For we are witnessing the appearance of #cartels and #monopolies that could have never been formed in a properly regulated market. Bitcoin as such will not work to empower the individual and free him from centralized power, instead Bitcoin serves to create new #centralized_power_structures that are unregulated, opaque and unaccountable.
où l’on découvre les #mining_guilds qui « contrôlent » bitcoin
j’y suis allé de mon petit billet #shameless_autopromo
▻https://fluxetfixe.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/bitcoin-bulle-paroxystique (mais j’avais pas encore vu les guilds... donc shame quand même)
Cf. Bitcoin / La monnaie virtuelle pour les débutants
▻http://www.arretsurimages.net/contenu.php?id=5777
Et Bitcoin : le Net se frappe de monnaie
▻http://www.ecrans.fr/Bitcoin-le-Net-se-frappe-de,16252.html
Pour utiliser des bitcoins, rien de plus simple, il suffit de se créer un porte-monnaie grâce à un logiciel (Bitcoin-Qt sur un ordinateur, Bitcoin Wallet sur Android). Un porte-monnaie est composé d’une clé publique (que l’on peut transmettre à tout le monde, qui sert à recevoir des dépôts) et d’une clé privée (à garder secrète, comme son nom l’indique, étant donné qu’elle sert à payer). Ces deux chaînes de 34 et 50 caractères suffisent. Nul besoin de s’identifier ou d’effectuer la moindre démarche. Du coup, on peut même sauvegarder son porte-monnaie en l’imprimant. Ensuite, pour obtenir des bitcoins, il faut qu’ils soient transférés depuis un autre porte-monnaie. Des sites se sont naturellement montés pour gérer les transactions entre acheteurs et vendeurs. C’est le cas de Mt.gox ou Bitcoin-central.net. Lorsqu’une transaction est effectuée, l’ordre est transmis au réseau de machines chargé de gérer le système. N’importe qui peut d’ailleurs inscrire son ordinateur dans ce réseau pour participer à l’effort. La validité de l’ordre va ensuite être confirmée par plusieurs machines (elles vont vérifier les antécédents de chaque porte-monnaie pour voir si les sommes sont disponibles), puis il sera ajouté à ce qui s’appelle la « chaîne de blocs », un journal ultrasécurisé qui répertorie toutes les transactions effectuées sur le réseau Bitcoin. Ce sont ces ordinateurs qui mettent en circulation les nouveaux bitcoins. En récompense du travail effectué, ils peuvent aussi percevoir des frais de transaction.
How Companies Learn Your Secrets - NYTimes.com
►http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all
Impressionnant, long et bien écrit, à la mode des journalistes du NYT.
Est-ce que ça change quelque chose d’être considéré comme une machine à répondre aux sollicitations ?
Article remarquable !
Nous allons vous faire parvenir des coupons pour des choses que vous voulez avant même de savoir que vous les voulez
#marketing #consommation #habitudes #achat et au passage la fabuleuse histoire de « Febreze », le pschit contre les mauvaises odeurs inventés par Procter & Gamble #data-mining
How we made our maps | Hacks/Hackers
►http://hackshackers.com/blog/2011/11/06/how-we-made-our-maps
#cartographie #data #mining #new-york
Dr. Michael Hendryx, measuring mining’s toll on health | Living on Earth
►http://www.loe.org/blog/blogs.html?seriesID=1&blogID=17
This week the Journal of Community Health published a study that found people who live near mountaintop removal coal mines have cancer rates twice as high as people living elsewhere in Appalachia. Last month, a peer-reviewed study linked mountaintop removal mining to high rates of birth defects.
And in February, a study pegged the public health costs of coal in Appalachia at about $80 billion a year.
Aside from all being about coal, these studies have something else in common: they were all co-authored by Dr. Michael Hendryx, an associate professor of community medicine at West Virginia University. Since landing in West Virginia five years ago, Hendryx has been filling a void in medicine’s understanding of the health impacts of coal mining.
