position:miner

  • Connecticut legislators to consider minimum pay for Uber and Lyft drivers - Connecticut Post
    https://www.ctpost.com/politics/article/Connecticut-legislators-to-consider-minimum-pay-13608071.php

    By Emilie Munson, February 11, 2019 - Prompted by growing numbers of frustrated Uber and Lyft drivers, lawmakers will hold a hearing on establishing minimum pay for app-based drivers.

    After three separate legislative proposals regarding pay for drivers flooded the Labor and Public Employees Committee, the committee will raise the concept of driver earnings as a bill, said state Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, who chairs the committee, on Friday night.

    A coalition of Uber and Lyft drivers from New Haven has been pressuring lawmakers to pass a pay standard, following New York City’s landmark minimum pay ordinance for app-based drivers approved in December. The legislation, which set an earnings floor of $17.22 an hour for the independent contractors, took effect on Feb. 1.

    Connecticut drivers have no minimum pay guarantees.

    Guillermo Estrella, who drives for Uber, worked about 60 hours per week last year and received $25,422.65 in gross pay. His pay stub doesn’t reflect how much Estrella paid for insurance, gas, oil changes and wear-and-tear on his car. Factor those expenses in, and the Branford resident said his yearly take-home earnings were about $18,000 last year.

    Estrella and other New Haven drivers have suggested bill language to cap the portion of riders’ fares that Uber and Lyft can take at 25 percent, with the remaining 75 percent heading to drivers’ pockets. The idea has already received pushback from Uber, which said it was unrealistic given their current pay structure.

    Connecticut legislators have suggested two other models for regulating driver pay. State Sen. Steve Cassano, D-Manchester, filed a bill to set a minimum pay rate per mile and per minute for drivers. His bill has not assigned numbers to those minimums yet.

    “What (drivers) were making when Uber started and got its name, they are not making that anymore,” said Cassano. “The company is taking advantage of the success of the company. I understand that to a point, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the drivers.”

    State Rep. Peter Tercyak, D-New Britain, proposed legislation that says if drivers’ earnings do not amount to hourly minimum wage payments, Uber or Lyft should have to kick in the difference. Connecticut’s minimum wage is now $10.10, although Democrats are making a strong push this year to raise it.

    As lawmakers consider these proposals, they will confront issues raised by the growing “gig economy”: a clash between companies seeking thousands of flexible, independent contractors and a workforce that wants the benefits and rights of traditional, paid employment.

    Some Democrats at the Capitol support the changes that favor drivers.

    “I thought it was important to make sure our labor laws are keeping up with the changes we are seeing in this emerging gig economy, that we have sufficient safeguards to make sure that drivers are not being exploited,” said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown.

    But the proposals also raise broad, difficult questions like what protections does a large independent contractor workforce need? And how would constraining the business model of Uber and Lyft impact service availability around the state?

    Sen. Craig Miner, a Republican of Litchfield who sits on the Labor committee, wondered why Uber and Lyft drivers should have guaranteed pay, when other independent contractors do not. How would this impact the tax benefits realized by independent contractors, he asked.

    Uber and Lyft declined to provide data on how many drivers they have in the state, and the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles does not keep count. In Connecticut, 82 percent of Lyft drivers drive fewer than 20 hours per week, said Kaelan Richards, a Lyft spokesperson.

    Last week, Hearst Connecticut Media spoke to 20 Uber and Lyft drivers in New Haven who are demanding lawmakers protect their pay. All drove full-time for Uber or Lyft or both.

    An immigrant from Ecuador, Estrella, the Branford driver, struggles to pay for rent and groceries for his pregnant wife and seven-year-old son using his Uber wages.

    “A cup of coffee at the local Starbucks cost $3 or $4,” said Estrella. “How can a trip can cost $3 when you have to drive to them five minutes away and drop them off after seven or eight minutes?”

    In December, 50 Uber and Lyft drivers held a strike in New Haven demanding better pay. The New Haven drivers last week said they are planning more strikes soon.

    “Why is Uber lowering the rates and why do we have to say yes to keep working?” asked Carlos Gomez, a Guilford Uber driver, last week.

    The drivers believe Uber and Lyft are decreasing driver pay and taking a larger chunk of rider fares for company profits. Many New Haven drivers said pay per mile has been decreasing. They liked Sen. Cassano’s idea of setting minimum pay per mile and per minute.

    “The payment by mile, it went down by 10 cents,” said Rosanna Olan, a driver from West Haven. “Before it was more than one dollar and now when you have a big truck SUV, working long distance especially is not worth it anymore.”

    Uber and Lyft both declined to provide pay rates per mile and per minute for drivers. Drivers are not paid for time spent driving to pick up a passenger, nor for time spent idling waiting for a ride, although the companies’ model depends on having drivers ready to pick up passengers at any moment.

    Lyft said nationally drivers earn an average of $18.83 an hour, but did not provide Connecticut specific earnings.

    “Our goal has always been to empower drivers to get the most out of Lyft, and we look forward to continBy Emilie Munson Updated 4:49 pm EST, Monday, February 11, 2019uing to do so in Connecticut, and across the country," said Rich Power, public policy manager at Lyft.

    Uber discouraged lawmakers from considering the drivers’ proposal of capping the transportation companies’ cut of rider fares. Uber spokesman Harry Hartfield said the idea wouldn’t work because Uber no longer uses the “commission model” — that stopped about two years ago.

    “In order to make sure we can provide customers with an up-front price, driver fares are not tied to what the rider pays,” said Hartfield. “In fact, on many trips drivers actually make more money than the rider pays.”

    What the rider is pays to Uber is an estimated price, calculated before the ride starts, Hartfield explained, while the driver receives from Uber a fare that is calculated based on actual drive time and distance. Changing the model could make it hard to give customers up-front pricing and “lead to reduced price transparency,” Hartfield said. New York’s changes raised rates for riders.

    James Bhandary-Alexander, a New Haven Legal Assistance attorney who is working with the drivers, said Uber’s current pay model is “irrelevant to how drivers want to be paid for the work.”

    “The reason that drivers care is it seems fundamentally unfair that the rider is willing to pay or has paid $100 for the ride and the driver has only gotten $30 or $40 of that,” he said.

    Pursuing any of the three driver-pay proposals would bring Uber and Lyft lobbyists back to the Capitol, where they negotiated legislation spearheaded by Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, from 2015 to 2017.

    Scanlon said the companies eventually favored the bill passed in 2017, which, after some compromise, required drivers have insurance, limited “surge pricing,” mandated background checks for drivers, imposed a 25 cent tax collected by the state and stated passengers must be picked up and delivered anywhere without discrimination.

    “One of my biggest regrets about that bill, which I think is really good for consumers in Connecticut, is that we didn’t do anything to try to help the driver,” said Scanlon, who briefly drove for Uber.
    By Emilie Munson Updated 4:49 pm EST, Monday, February 11, 2019
    emunson@hearstmediact.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson

    #USA #Uber #Connecticut #Mindestlohn #Klassenkampf

  • Secure Proof of Stake in #blockchain, Explained
    https://hackernoon.com/secure-proof-of-stake-in-blockchain-explained-f7fbea5a787a?source=rss---

    Secure Proof of Stake in Blockchain: ExplainedProof of Stake consensus mechanism states that a person can either mine or validate block transactions in accordance with how many coins he or she possesses. Now, this implies that the more bitcoin or altcoins are owned by a miner, the more mining power he or she has.The first digital currency to adopt this method of Proof of Stake was Peercoin.Let’s discuss this in detailWhat Exactly is Proof of Stake?The Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm was first introduced back in 2011 on the Bitcointalk forum aimed to solve the issues of the most popular algorithm in use — Proof of Work.Where both the algorithms share the same goal of reaching consensus in the blockchain, the process to reach this goal in for both is all different.How Does This (...)

    #ethereum #proof-of-stake #blockchain-technology

  • Churchill Was More Villain Than Hero in Britain’s Colonies - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-16/churchill-was-more-villain-than-hero-in-britain-s-colonies

    The recent flap over Winston Churchill — with Labour politician John McDonnell calling Britain’s most revered prime minister a “villain” and prompting a rebuke from the latter’s grandson — will astonish many Indians. That’s not because the label itself is a misnomer, but because McDonnell was exercised by the death of one Welsh miner in 1910. In fact, Churchill has the blood of millions on his hands whom the British prefer to forget.

    “History,” Churchill himself said, “will judge me kindly, because I intend to write it myself.” He did, penning a multi-volume history of World War Two, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his self-serving fictions. As the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies remarked of the man many Britons credit with winning the war, "His real tyrant is the glittering phrase, so attractive to his mind that awkward facts have to give way.”

    Awkward facts, alas, there are aplenty. As McDonnell correctly noted, Churchill as Home Secretary in 1910 sent battalions of police from London and ordered them to attack striking miners in Tonypandy in South Wales; one was killed and nearly 600 strikers and policemen were injured. It’s unlikely this troubled his conscience much. He later assumed operational command of the police during a siege of armed Latvian anarchists in Stepney, where he decided to allow them to be burned to death in a house where they were trapped.

  • #cryptocurrency and #loans
    https://hackernoon.com/cryptocurrency-and-loans-5de5b722eedf?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    Cryptocurrency is a digital coin, designed to be transferred between people in virtual transactions. Cryptocurrencies exist best as statistics and no longer as physical gadgets; you can not virtually preserve a bitcoin for your hand or hold there on your security. Proudly owning a bitcoin way you have got the collective agreement of every and each pc at the bitcoin network that it’s far currently owned by way of you and — extra importantly — that it became legitimately created through a miner.Advantages Of CryptocurrencyFraud:Cryptocurrencies are digital and cannot be counterfeited or reversed arbitrarily by way of the sender, as with credit card fee-backs.Identity Robbery:While you supply your credit card to a service provider, you give him or her get entry to for your complete credit line, (...)

    #cryptocurrency-loans #cryptocurrency-and-loans #crypto

  • U.S. Will Lose From Trade War as Flows Shift, Top Miner Says - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/mining-giant-bhp-hits-out-at-trade-curbs-as-trump-takes-on-china

    • Mackenzie expects ‘dampening effect’ on growth from the curbs
    • Top miner says U.S. steel users now paying ‘considerably more’

    The U.S. risks losing out from its curbs on trade as rival nations including China will seek to do more business with each other, BHP Billiton Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mackenzie warned as the head of the world’s largest miner stepped up his criticism of rising protectionism.

    There’s a lot of countries in the world that want to trade more with each other, now that it looks like the U.S. wants to trade less with them,” Mackenzie said in a Bloomberg Television interview, citing discussions with global trade ministers. “China will absolutely look to walk in that area and look to find exports with other people,” he said after BHP reported earnings.

  • #blockchain vs. #bitcoin vs. #iota
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-vs-bitcoin-vs-iota-72243251c07c?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---

    A Beginner’s GuideBlockchain technology is what powers the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) and IOTA is the newest cryptocurrency that is competing with BTC. So how they are related and what makes them distinct from each other, you will get know in this blog.Bitcoin or BTC is the most commonly known cryptocurrency which uses the blockchain technology, whereas IOTA is another cryptocurrency but unlike BTC, it uses Tangle technology.So it’s either Bitcoin vs. IOTA or Blockchain vs. Tangle, let’s compare:1. Transaction FeesA bitcoin transaction involves a transaction fee of 0.001 BTC. This transaction fee is given to the miner, who ensures that the payer has enough money to make that transaction.IOTA, on the other hand, make you do the mining removing any additional cost that is supposed to be (...)

    #bitcoin-vs-iota #blockchain-vs-bitcoin

  • Musicola “Песня о Караганде” [la chanson de Karaganda] 2013 - YouTube

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtrBUeczL3E

    Tant qu’il y aura des petites vidéos (et des chanteuses et chanteurs) de ce style, aussi délicieusement kitsch et nostalgique, il restera de l’espoir. Bonne nuit.

    “Miner’s city, beloved and native. I was born in Karaganda.My friends live in Karaganda. I saw many places in the world. But you are the one and only, my Karaganda”

    Song by “Musicola" band, Karina Abdullina and Bulat Syzdykov, Kazakhstan, 2013

  • #blockchain May Be the Answer to Making Self Driving Cars Safer
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-may-be-the-answer-to-making-self-driving-cars-safer-7d8e18067

    Image source: BBC NewsA few days ago, Uber, the world largest taxi sharing company, got into trouble after one of its self-driving cars hit and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.According to the Guardian, footage released by the police shows that the SUV’s LIDAR and radar system failed to detect the victim even though she was visible in front of the car before the collision.The Uber accident underlines what have been on the minds of most of us; just how safe are self-driving cars compared to their human-operated counterparts?While there isn’t enough data to determine whether autonomous cars are safer than human-driven ones, the premise behind the technology seems to suggest so. The self-driving technology involves highly sensitive cameras and sensors equipped with the latest (...)

    #self-driving-cars #autonomous-cars #autonomous-vehicles #self-driving-blockchain

  • Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/world/europe/afd-unions-social-democrats.html?mabReward=ART_TS7&recid=10QNLdudNovobmvNWE

    BOTTROP, Germany — Guido Reil is a coal miner, like his father and grandfather before him. He joined a trade union at 18 and the center-left Social Democratic Party at 20. Fast-talking and loud, he has been an elected union representative for over a decade.

    But two years ago, after the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Germany, Mr. Reil switched to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. Competing in state legislative elections last May, the party won 20 percent of the vote in his home district with his name on its list — and the Social Democrats slipped 16 percentage points from a previous election.

    “Those are my former comrades,” Mr. Reil said, chuckling. “They came with me.”

    How is a far-right party drawing voters from labor, a traditional bastion of the left? The question is not academic, but goes directly to the heart of the emerging threat the AfD presents to Germany’s political establishment, including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

    The AfD shocked Germany in the fall when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II. But that breakthrough not only shattered a significant postwar taboo. It has also enormously complicated the task of forming a new governing coalition, leaving Germany and all of Europe in months of limbo.

    Ms. Merkel and her conservative alliance are negotiating a coalition deal with their former governing partners, the left-leaning Social Democrats. If they do, the AfD will be Germany’s primary opposition party, leaving a wide opening for it to pick up even more traditionally left-leaning voters who fear the Social Democrats have been co-opted.
    Continue reading the main story

    Many fear that the AfD, as the leading voice of the opposition, would have a perfect perch to turn the protest vote it received in national elections in September — it finished third with 13 percent of the vote — into a loyal and sustained following.

    “If we go back into government, the AfD will overtake us,” predicted Hilde Mattheis, a Social Democratic lawmaker from Baden-Wurttemberg, where that has already happened.
    Continue reading the main story
    Photo
    Mr. Reil driving by the Prosper-Haniel mine in Bottrop. He has worked in six mines, five of which have closed. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

    The 92 AfD lawmakers, who have been busy moving into their new parliamentary offices in central Berlin, have not been shy about using the spotlight.

    One, Jürgen Pohl, recently addressed Parliament and criticized the labor market changes that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democratic Party passed from 2003 to 2005, saying they created a host of poorly regulated, precarious jobs.

    The AfD, Mr. Pohl said, “is a new people’s party that cares about the little people.”

    When some center-left lawmakers guffawed, Mr. Pohl pointed at the television cameras. “Go ahead and laugh,” he said, “your voters are watching.”

    Indeed, they are. The AfD has already overtaken the Social Democrats as the second-biggest party in state elections across much of what was formerly East Germany. In Bavaria, it is not far behind.

    But Mr. Reil believes his party has the greatest potential in places like Bottrop, in the Ruhr area, once the industrial heartland of West Germany and long a bastion of Social Democratic and union power.

    The Ruhr has produced coal since the 16th century, and it shaped modern Germany in the process. It powered the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the postwar economic miracle and even European integration: The coal and steel community was the seedling of the European Union.

    But today, Bottrop and surrounding cities are in decline.

    Mr. Reil has worked in six mines, five of which have closed. Along with some 2,500 others, he will take early retirement, at 48, after the last mine ceases production in December.

    With the mines, most bars have closed, too, as has a whole social and cultural scene that once kept the area alive.
    Continue reading the main story
    Photo
    Mr. Reil won 20 percent of votes in a district where the AfD had never fielded a candidate before. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

    The AfD’s “pro-worker” platform (“pro-coal, pro-diesel and anti-immigration,” as Mr. Reil puts it) resonates in Bottrop as well as on the factory floors of Germany’s iconic carmakers in the former east and the wealthy south of the country.

    As elections loom nationwide for worker representatives who bargain with management on behalf of their fellow employees, lists of candidates close to the AfD are circulating at several flagship companies, including Daimler and BMW. There are plans to create a new national workers’ movement, Mr. Reil said. The working name is the Alternative Union of Germany.

    “The revolution,” he predicted, “will be in the car industry.”

    Trade union leaders, currently on strike for higher pay and a 28-hour workweek for those wanting to care for children or elderly relatives, publicly dismiss such talk as “marginal.” But privately, some worry.

    One of Mr. Reil’s allies, Oliver Hilburger, a mechanic at a Daimler plant near Stuttgart, founded an alternative union called Zentrum Automobil in 2009, four years before the AfD even existed.

    Mr. Hilburger, who has been at the company for 28 years, is not a member of the AfD but he votes for it. He thinks the party and his union are a natural fit.
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    When it emerged that he had once played for a band associated with neo-Nazis, the news media reported the fact widely. But that did not stop his colleagues from giving his union 10 percent of their votes and electing him as one of their representatives.

    This spring, Mr. Hilburger, who calls his musical past “a sin of youth,” is fielding more than 250 candidates in at least four factories. Several of them, he said, are immigrants who have lived in Germany for years and support the AfD.

    “There is a feeling among workers that the old unions collude with the bosses and the government,” Mr. Hilburger said.
    Continue reading the main story
    Photo
    Mr. Reil with AfD supporters during an informal meeting at a bar in Essen. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

    “The bosses and the media talk about skills shortages and how we need even more immigration,” he said. “We want to talk about a shortage of decent jobs for those who are already in the country. The AfD has understood that.”

    The AfD is ideologically divided, with many senior members staunchly capitalist and suspicious of labor unions.

    The strategic focus on the working class speaks to the challenge of turning protest voters into a loyal base, said Oskar Niedermayer, a professor of political science at the Free University in Berlin.

    “Breaking into the union milieu is key to that strategy,” Mr. Niedermayer said.

    He warned that the reflex to ostracize the AfD could backfire. Some unions are advising members to shun anyone in the AfD. Some soccer clubs are planning to outright bar them. And as Mr. Niedermayer pointed out, lawmakers from other parties have systematically blocked every AfD candidate for senior parliamentary posts.

    “It confirms them in their role as victims of the elites,” he said. “Workers who see themselves as victims of the elites will only identify with them more.”

    As the AfD appeals to Germany’s left-behinds, it is also trying to tie them to other parts of the party’s agenda, like its hard line on immigration.

    For instance, the battle cry of Frank-Christian Hansel, an AfD member of Berlin’s state Parliament, is to save the German welfare state — but for Germans.

    “If you want social justice, you need to manage who is coming into your country,” Mr. Hansel said. “Open borders and welfare state don’t go together.”
    Continue reading the main story
    Photo
    An advertising board near the Prosper-Haniel mine. Mr. Reil said the AfD was “pro-coal, pro-diesel and anti-immigration.” Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

    It is the kind of rhetoric that sets the AfD apart from the traditional left, even as it goes fishing for voters in Social Democratic waters.

    For the AfD, it is not just those at the bottom against those at the top, Mr. Niedermayer said. It is insiders against outsiders. Social justice, yes, but only for Germans.

    In Bottrop, this message plays well.

    Residents complain about some refugees being prescribed “therapeutic horseback-riding” and courses in flirtation, courtesy of taxpayers, while public schools are in decline.

    “They get the renovated social housing, while Germans wait for years,” said Linda Emde, the manager of one of the few remaining bars. “But when you speak up against migration, they call you a racist.”

    Ms. Emde had voted for the Social Democrats all her life. But in September, she and her husband switched to the AfD.

    Mr. Reil, who never managed to rise through the Social Democrats’ local party hierarchy, is now a member of the AfD’s national leadership team. At the monthly meetings, he sits at the same table as the aristocrat Beatrix von Storch and Alice Weidel, a professor.

    The two female lawmakers are perhaps best known for a recent social media rant about “barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men.” But for Mr. Reil, the point of his comment was that he had risen socially.

    “What do a miner, a princess and a professor have in common?” he jokes. “They are all in the AfD.”

    Follow Katrin Bennhold on Twitter: @kbennhold.

    Christopher Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin.

    #Allemagne #extrême_droite #syndicalisme

  • Bitcoin and Ethereum have a hidden power structure, and it’s just been revealed - MIT Technology Review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610018/bitcoin-and-ethereum-have-a-hidden-power-structure-and-its-just-be

    Perhaps the most striking finding is that the process of verifying transactions and securing a blockchain ledger against attack, called mining, is not actually that decentralized in either system. Bitcoin and Ethereum are open blockchain systems, meaning that in principle anyone can be a miner (see “What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters”). But organizations have formed to pool mining resources. The researchers found that the top four Bitcoin-mining operations had more than 53 percent of the system’s average mining capacity, measured on a weekly basis. Mining for Ethereum was even more consolidated: three miners accounted for 61 percent of the system’s average weekly capacity.

    They also found that 56 percent of Bitcoin’s “nodes,” the computers around the world running its software (not all of them engage in mining), are located in data centers, versus 28 percent for Ethereum. That might indicate that Bitcoin is more corporatized, Gün Sirer says. Overall, the group concluded that neither network “has strictly better properties than the other.”

    Discussions of decentralization may seem esoteric, but anyone interested in the future of cryptocurrency should try to follow along. Part of the vision sold by the technology’s biggest promoters is that it can help solve problems of financial inequality created in part by traditional, centralized institutions. If digital currency allows wealth and power to pool in the hands of a few, that’s not so revolutionary.

    #Bitcoin #Etherum #Crypto_monnaies #Pouvoir #Monnaie_numérique

  • Persistent drive-by cryptomining coming to a browser near you

    https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2017/11/persistent-drive-by-cryptomining-coming-to-a-browser-near-you

    Since our last blog on drive-by cryptomining, we are witnessing more and more cases of abuse involving the infamous Coinhive service that allows websites to use their visitors to mine the Monero cryptocurrency. Servers continue to get hacked with mining code, and plugins get hijacked and affect hundreds or even thousands of sites at once.

    One of the major drawbacks of web-based cryptomining we mentioned in our paper was its ephemeral nature compared to persistent malware that can run a miner for as long as the computer remains infected. Indeed, when users close their browser, the cryptomining activity will also stop, thereby cutting out the perpetrators’ profit.

  • Blockchains Use Massive Amounts of Energy—But There’s a Plan to Fix That - MIT Technology Review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609480/bitcoin-uses-massive-amounts-of-energybut-theres-a-plan-to-fix-it

    Bitcoin guzzles about as much electricity annually as all of Nigeria. Ethereum gulps electrons too, as do most other cryptocurrencies.

    Blockchains get a lot of love, but they are only shared sets of data. What brings cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to life is the way all the computers in their networks agree, over and over, that what a blockchain says is true. To do this, they use an algorithm called a consensus mechanism. You’ve probably heard it called “mining.” (See: “What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters”)

    Cryptocurrency miners do much more than unlock new coins. In the process, they check the blockchain to make sure people aren’t spending coins fraudulently, and they add new lists of transactions—the blocks—to the chain. It’s the second step, meant to secure the blockchain from attacks, that guzzles electricity.

    Ultimately, the miners must transform each list of most recent transactions into a digital signature that can serve as proof that the information is true. All miners can do this, using a cryptographic tool that takes any input and spits out a string of seemingly random characters. But Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, made this part particularly difficult.

    This expends an immense amount of energy, signaling to the rest of the network that a miner’s accounting can be trusted.

    But while this particular method of reaching agreement—known as “proof of work”—is the most established, it isn’t the only one. A growing number of technologists are exploring different avenues, and some smaller cryptocurrencies already employ alternative means.

    The one in the best position to supplant proof of work is called “proof of stake.”

    #Monnaie_numérique #Bitcoin #Energie

  • Coinhive – Monero JavaScript Mining
    https://coinhive.com

    Run your site without ads
    Coinhive offers a JavaScript miner for the Monero Blockchain (Why Monero?) that you can embed in your website. Your users run the miner directly in their Browser and mine XMR for you in turn for an ad-free experience, in-game currency or whatever incentives you can come up with.

    Will This Work On My Site?

    Technically yes, economically probably not. If you run a blog that gets 10 visits/day, the payout will be miniscule. For the captcha and shortlinks with a sensible hash goal (1024–16384) you’ll need to have a whole lot of users to make this worthwhile.

    Implementing a reward system for your site or game where users have to keep mining for longer durations is far more feasible. With just 10–20 active miners on your site, you can expect a monthly revenue of about 0.3 XMR (~$36).

    If you run a streaming video site, a community site, an online game or anything else where you can give your users an incentive to run the miner for longer durations, then by all means: try it.

  • Pirate Bay ’borrows’ visitor CPUs to mine virtual coins
    https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/16/pirate-bay-hijacks-cpus-for-digital-currency-mining

    « Si c’est gratuit, tu es le produit »

    Piracy websites can’t really depend on ads, so how do they make money? By using your PC’s processor cycles, apparently — whether you want to or not. Visitors to The Pirate Bay have discovered JavaScript code in the website that ’borrows’ your processor for the sake of mining Monero digital coins. It doesn’t always happen (it mainly appears in search results and category listings), but you’ll definitely notice the sharp spike in CPU usage when it kicks in.

    The site tells TorrentFreak that it was testing the feature for about 24 hours as a new way of generating revenue, and that it could eventually be enough to replace ads. In short, don’t be surprised if this becomes a mainstay of the site going forward. Users have found that they can block the miner through their browser settings or add-ons like ad blockers, so it’s not inescapable.

    Without warnings, however, many inexperienced visitors won’t even realize what’s happening, let alone figure out how to stop it. And that’s the real concern. While there isn’t much sympathy to be had for pirate site hosts eager for revenue, the unsuspecting visitors are another story — they didn’t ask to bog down their systems.

    #Monnaie_numérique #Pirate_Bay #confiance

  • Why modern mortar crumbles, but Roman concrete lasts millennia | Science | AAAS
    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-crumbles-roman-concrete-lasts-millennia

    Modern concrete—used in everything from roads to buildings to bridges—can break down in as few as 50 years. But more than a thousand years after the western Roman Empire crumbled to dust, its concrete structures are still standing. Now, scientists have finally figured out why: a special ingredient that makes the cement grow stronger—not weaker—over time. Scientists began their search with an ancient recipe for mortar, laid down by Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius in 30 B.C.E. It called for a concoction of volcanic ash, lime, and seawater, mixed together with volcanic rocks and spread into wooden molds that were then immersed in more sea water. History contains many references to the durability of Roman concrete, including this cryptic note written in 79 B.C.E., describing concrete exposed to seawater as: “a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves and everyday stronger.” What did it mean? To find out, the researchers studied drilled cores of a Roman harbor from Pozzuoli Bay near Naples, Italy. When they analyzed it, they found that the seawater had dissolved components of the volcanic ash, allowing new binding minerals to grow. Within a decade, a very rare hydrothermal mineral called aluminum tobermorite (Al-tobermorite) had formed in the concrete. Al-tobermorite, long known to give Roman concrete its strength, can be made in the lab, but it’s very difficult to incorporate it in concrete. But the researchers found that when seawater percolates through a cement matrix, it reacts with volcanic ash and crystals to form Al-tobermorite and a porous mineral called phillipsite, they write today in American Mineralogist. So will you be seeing stronger piers and breakwaters anytime soon? Because both minerals take centuries to strengthen concrete, modern scientists are still working on recreating a modern version of Roman cement.

    #innovation #nouveau versus #progrès

  • DDoSCoin : Researchers create crypto coin with DDoS puzzle for miners

    http://www.itnews.com.au/news/researchers-create-cryptocoin-with-ddos-puzzle-for-miners-433500

    University of Colorado assistant professor Eric Wustrow and University of Michigan phD student Benjamin VanderSloot have created a cryptocurrency that uses a malicious alternative to bitcoin’s double-SHA256 hash-based proof-of-work, the computational effort required to mine new coins.

    Called DDoSCoin, the alternative cryptocurrency’s “Proof-of-DDoS” allows miners to prove that they have participated in distributed denial of service attacks against preselected targets in order to create more virtual money.

    DDoSCoin operates by miners opening a large number of Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections to target webservers. It would then use the signed responses as proof a connection has occurred.

    Miners with DDoSCoin blocks could then trade these for other currencies, including bitcoin and ethereum.

    This malicious “proof-of-DDoS” model used by DDoSCoin miners works only with sites that support TLS 1.2, but the researchers said over half of the top million websites as measured by metrics firm Alexa support that version of the protocol.

    Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, a mathematical puzzle that miners have to collectively solve before more units of the currency can be created, has been criticised as a waste of resources.

    The paper presented at the Usenix 2016 security conference:

    https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot16/woot16-paper-wustrow.pdf

    #DDoSCoin #bitcoin #cryptocurrency

  • The Bitcoin Gospel, VPRO Backlight documentary, Novembre 2015

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zKuoqZLyKg

    A very good and critical documentary about how it works, how it came to be, and it’s limitations.

    Features:
    Roger Ver, bitcoin evangelist and founder of https://blockchain.info

    Marshal Long, CEO of Final Hash, one of the largest bitcoin mines in the world, in China.

    Garrick Hileman, Economic Historian at the London School of Economics & University of Cambridge, best known for his research on financial and monetary innovation.

    • The critical views of Izabella Kaminska, of Financial Times, who says

    In the current economy, because of the way our money is structured, if I decide to horde my dollars then I’m usually hording them in an institution that is using them as a means of capital and they will be lending them out. So that money, even though I am saving, is going into an investment somewhere else. […] But in Bitcoin, there isn’t that opportunity. So a horded Bitcoin is a horded Bitcoin. It’s totally idle. It has no interest, it has no yield. It is simply sitting there and yet the person who is holding onto it thinks they have a right to future income flow, as if they have been investing.

    An article summarising her criticism can be found here:
    http://notesonliberty.com/2015/11/08/the-bitcoin-gospel-and-its-critiques

    An interesting thought evoked by her is that bitcoin is supposed to democratic, but the power starts to concentrate in those 1% who have the power/capacity (money) and to mine. If you want to be a miner you have to invest a lot of money in equipment. Anyone can use bitcoin, but not everyone can mine bitcoins (anymore).

    Brett Scott, author of “The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money
    http://www.amazon.fr/Heretics-Guide-Global-Finance-Hacking/dp/0745333508


    Popular anger against the financial system has never been higher, yet the practical workings of the system remain opaque to many people. The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance aims to bridge the gap between protest slogans and practical proposals for reform. Brett Scott is a campaigner and former derivatives broker who has a unique understanding of life inside and outside the financial sector. He builds up a framework for approaching it based on the three principles of ’Exploring’, ’Jamming’ and ’Building’, offering a practical guide for those who wish to deepen their understanding of, and access to, the inner workings of financial institutions. Scott covers aspects frequently overlooked, such as the cultural dimensions of the financial system, and considers major issues such as agricultural speculation, carbon markets and tar-sands financing. Crucially, it also showcases the growing alternative finance movement, showing how everyday people can get involved in building a new, democratic, financial system.

    Andreas Antonopoulos, author of the O’Reilly series book “Mastering Bitcoin

    http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do


    Want to join the technological revolution that’s taking the world of finance by storm? Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the requisite knowledge to help you participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this practical book is essential reading.

    Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its infancy and it’s already spawned a multi-billion dollar global economy. This economy is open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides you with the knowledge you need (passion not included).

    This book includes:
    ○ A broad introduction to bitcoin—ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives
    ○ An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects
    ○ Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles
    ○ Offshoots of the bitcoin and blockchain inventions, including alternative chains, currencies, and applications
    ○ User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts

    • There is also a part on the Dutch city of Arnhem and it’s “Bitcoin Boulevard” where you can spend an entire extended weekend on vacation paying only in bitcoins.

    #bitcoin

  • The Illusion Machine That Teaches Us How We See - Issue 32: Space
    http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/the-illusion-machine-that-teaches-us-how-we-see-rp

    The man sprang onstage dressed as a miner, complete with headlamp and pickaxe. After swinging the axe a few times, he proclaimed to the audience that he had discovered a “supermagnet”—a substance so strong it could attract even wood. A video screen above him appeared to prove him right: It showed wooden balls rolling up four ramps, seemingly unbound by gravity. Amazeballs In this prize-winning illusion by Sugihara, wooden balls appear to roll up four ramps. Kokichi Sugihara The man was not in fact a miner, but a mathematician—Kokichi Sugihara, of Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. He was competing in the 2010 finals of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest in Naples, Florida. And, as the video went on to show, the balls were not really rolling uphill. A look at the back of (...)

  • Le TSL acquitte al-Jadeed, Karma Khayat reconnue coupable
    http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/944981/le-tsl-acquitte-al-jadeed-karma-khayat-reconnue-coupable.html

    La chaîne de télévision libanaise al-Jadeed, accusée d’avoir diffusé des informations sur des témoins protégés dans l’enquête sur l’assassinat de l’ancien Premier ministre Rafic Hariri, a été acquittée d’outrage et entrave à la justice par le juge compétent en matière d’outrage du Tribunal spécial pour le Liban (TSL), Nicola Lettieri.

    Le tribunal a certes estimé que trois témoins présumés, sur un total de onze concernés par cette affaire, pouvaient être identifiés grâce aux informations publiées par Al-Jadeed-TV. Mais, a soutenu le juge Lettieri, rien ne montre que « les individus concernés ait souffert de quoi que ce soit à cause de ces divulgations ».

    L’accusation n’a « pas prouvé au-delà de tout doute raisonnable que la divulgation (...) pouvait objectivement miner la confiance du public dans la capacité du tribunal à protéger la confidentialité de certaines informations », a-t-il ajouté lors d’une audience publique dans la banlieue de La Haye, où siège le TSL.

    La rédactrice en chef adjointe et la vice-présidente du conseil d’administration de la chaîne al-Jadeed, Karma Mohammad Tahsine Khayat, a elle aussi été acquittée pour la diffusion des reportages, mais a été reconnue coupable de ne pas les avoir retirés du site Internet de la chaîne lorsque le tribunal le lui avait demandé.

    • Lebanon Tribunal Gives Mixed Verdict in Confidential Witnesses Case
      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/world/middleeast/lebanon-hariri-tribunal-karma-khayat-al-jadeed-tv-trial.html

      An international court on Friday found Karma Al-Khayat, an executive with Al Jadeed TV in Lebanon, guilty of contempt of court for ignoring its order to remove broadcasts about confidential witnesses from the station’s website. She was acquitted, however, of the more serious charge of obstruction of justice.

      The station’s parent company, New TV, based in Beirut, was tried on similar charges before the same Italian judge, Nicola Lettieri, but on Friday he cleared the company on all counts.

      The case against Ms. Khayat and Al Jadeed drew criticism from news organizations in Lebanon and abroad, raising questions about whether the trials amounted to an attack on the freedom of the press. Diplomats and lawyers also followed it because the charges against the company, rather than an individual, appeared to develop a novel notion of corporate liability in international criminal law.

      “I’m delighted the judge unequivocally rejected the charges against the company, because they lacked a legal base in international law,” said Karim Khan, the British lawyer representing Ms. Khayat and New TV. He said he was satisfied that Ms. Khayat had been acquitted of the most serious charge she faced, obstruction of justice. He also said that Ms. Khayat would almost certainly appeal the contempt of court conviction.

      Ms. Khayat, 32, whose family is the main owner of Al Jadeed TV, could face a prison term or fine. The prosecutor asked for a 12-month sentence or a fine of 100,000 euros, about $130,000. Ms. Khayat was scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 28.

    • Chez la BBC, on titre carrément sur le fait que Karma Khayat a été innocentée par « la Hague »… la condamnation pour outrage n’est mentionnée qu’après trois paragraphes : Hague court clears Lebanese journalist
      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34288461

      A Lebanese TV journalist and her station have been cleared of obstructing justice by a UN-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

      Karma Khayat and Al Jadeed had been accused of having revealed details about key protected witnesses.

      But Ms Khayat was convicted of contempt of court for failing to remove broadcasts about the case online.

    • Why the judgement against Karma Khayyat is disappointing: Another case of STL “selective #justice
      https://mideastwire.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/why-the-judgement-against-karma-khayyat-is-disappointing-anot

      As for the Khayyat judgement, it is disappointing not because of her case in itself – I cant evaluate that…. but rather because of all the many many many destructive leaks etc by many new orgs and journos over the last 10 years – NONE of which have been brought before the court.

      Strange, right, that the only two cases involve vociferous critics of the STL!

      Strange and another sad mark on a process that could have been and should have been far better.

      #mascarade

  • The Illusion Machine That Teaches Us How We See - Issue 19: Illusions
    http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/the-illusion-machine-that-teaches-us-how-we-see

    The man sprang onstage dressed as a miner, complete with headlamp and pickaxe. After swinging the axe a few times, he proclaimed to the audience that he had discovered a “supermagnet”—a substance so strong it could attract even wood. A video screen above him appeared to prove him right: It showed wooden balls rolling up four ramps, seemingly unbound by gravity. Amazeballs In this prize-winning illusion by Sugihara, wooden balls appear to roll up four ramps. Kokichi Sugihara The man was not in fact a miner, but a mathematician—Kokichi Sugihara, of Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. He was competing in the 2010 finals of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest in Naples, Florida. And, as the video went on to show, the balls were not really rolling uphill. A look at the back of (...)

  • Climate change is disrupting flower pollination, research shows
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/06/climate-change-is-disrupting-flower-pollination-research-shows

    The work used museum records stretching back to 1848 to show that the early spider orchid and the miner bee on which it depends for reproduction have become increasingly out of sync as spring temperatures rise due to global warming.

    The orchid resembles a female miner bee and exudes the same sex pheromone to seduce the male bee into “pseudocopulation” with the flower, an act which also achieves pollination. The orchids have evolved to flower at the same time as the bee emerges.

    But while rising temperatures cause both the orchid and the bee to flower or fly earlier in the spring, the bees are affected much more, which leads to a mismatch.

    “We have shown that plants and their pollinators show different responses to climate change and that warming will widen the timeline between bees and flowers emerging,” said Dr Karen Robbirt, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the University of East Anglia (UEA). “If replicated in less specific systems, this could have severe implications for crop productivity.”

    She said the research, published in Current Biology on Thursday, is “the first clear example, supported by long-term data, of the potential for climate change to disrupt critical [pollination] relationships between species.”

  • Très belle galerie de photos, le Donbass avant…
    par Valeriya Myronenko

    Life before war in Ukraine’s Donbas
    http://www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/life-before-war-in-ukraines-donbas-2-357103.html

    “Of course it’s better to work in kopankas than on the government-owned mines,” one coal miner, who just slid out from a 100-meter-deep rabbit-hole in an aluminum bathtub, told me. “It’s closer to the surface, you get paid daily, and you don’t have to give a bribe to get here.” Doesn’t exactly fit a dream job description, but if you’re a resident of a small town in the Donbass, your employment options are far from bright.


    A coal miner sits in aluminum tub waiting to roll into caves as small as 50 centimeters high and 100 meters deep. Miners have little to no protection from coal dust and methane while inside.
    © Valeriya Myronenko

    à l’autre bout du cable, le treuil…


    A man operates a makeshift hoist created using metal wires and car engines. It’s purpose? To pull workers out of the mine. Miners communicate through vibrations of metal wire, that is stretched over the wood stump.
    © Valeriya Myronenko

    Les restes de la sidérurgie


    A significant drop in production volumes left large spaces within factories abandoned.
    © Valeriya Myronenko

    Cerise sur le gâteau pour les amateurs…


    The abandoned theatre in Alchevsk built by Nazi German hostages after World War II. The frame once held a biblical allusion to Josef Stalin descending down the grand staircase.
    © Valeriya Myronenko

    Et la présentation de la photographe par le Kyiv Post

    Editor’s Note: Valeriya Myronenko is a Toronto-based photographer with background in advertising and graphic design. Having spent most of her life in one of the small cities in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern coal-mining and industrial regions, she still has strong ties there. Her family continues to live there. During her trips home, Myronenko decided to create a project that will shed light on the daily realities in eastern Ukraine, that remained obscure not only to the Western, but also to the Ukrainian media. Her discovery shows life before the Russian-backed war came in April to Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, home to 15 percent of the Ukrainian nation.

  • Protesting Turkish miners call on government to uphold promises
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/protesting-turkish-miners-call-government-uphold-promises

    A miner who survived the May 2014 devastating coalmine blast of #Soma, takes to the streets with other miners for a protest against the government in Ankara on June 16, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Adem Altan)

    A group of Turkish miners from the town hit in May by #turkey's worst ever mine tragedy marched on parliament Wednesday to urge the government to honor promises made in the wake of the disaster. The miners from Soma, where 301 were killed, said the authorities were obliged to follow up on pledges to improve working conditions and safety standards. “We have not forgotten our 301 colleagues,” around 1,000 protesters shouted as they walked from the central Sihhiye square to the parliament in the capital Ankara. read (...)

  • “Miners Shot Down;” a haunting and emotional documentary
    http://africasacountry.com/miners-shot-down-a-haunting-and-emotional-documentary

    When Mzoxolo Magidiwana, a miner from #Marikana in #South_Africa’s Northwest Province, traces his family lineage of miners at #Lonmin Mines, he invokes in me memories of how I narrowly escaped becoming a miner, breaking the lineage from my father. I spent my early twenties in Sasolburg, a small coal-mining town in the Northern Free […]

    #FILM #MEDIA #POLITICS #Cyril_Ramaphosa #Miners_Shot_Down #Miners_Strike #platinum

  • #mine #collapse kills one, traps over 200 in #turkey
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/mine-collapse-kills-one-traps-over-200-turkey

    At least one miner was killed and as many as 300 others trapped after a coal mine collapsed in the western Turkish city of Manisa, a local official said. “At least 200-300 miners were working in the mine when an electric fault caused an explosion,” a regional governor told private NTV television. (AFP)

    #Top_News