Rutherford Chang simultaneously plays 100 copies from his collection of first-pressings of The Beatles’ White Album; this is the result. As the various recordings begin to play out of phase with each other, a new suite of music emerges, haunted, murky echoings of the original.
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The World’s Most Powerful Computer Network Is Being Wasted on Bitcoin, via algopop
Because of the way Bitcoin self-regulates, the math problems Bitcoin mining rigs have to do to get more ‘coin get harder and harder as time goes on. Not to any particular end, but just to make sure the world doesn’t get flooded with Bitcoins. So all these computers aren’t really accomplishing anything other than solving super difficult and necessarily arbitrary puzzles for cyber money. It’s kind of like rounding up the world’s greatest minds and making them do Sudokus for nickels.
Projects like Folding@Home and SETI@Home use similarly networked power for the less-pointless practices of parsing information that could lead to more effective medicines or finding extra-terrestrial life, respectively, and either are hard-pressed to scrounge up even half of a percent of the power the Bitcoin network is rocking. And with specialized Bitcoin-mining hardware on the rise, there’s going to be an army of totally powerhouse PCs out there that are good for literally nothing but digging up cybercoins.
It’s incredible to think about the amount of power being directed at this one, singular purpose; power that’s essentially being “donated” by thousands of people across the globe just because they have skin in the game. It’s by far the most computational effort that has ever been devoted to a single purpose. And sure, Bitcoins are fine and all, but can you imagine what we could do if this energy was put behind other tough problems? We’ll you’re going to have to imagine, because so long as mining Bitcoins can earn you money and folding proteins can’t, it’s pretty clear which one is gonna get done.
On the waste of computational resources towards mining Bitcoins.
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I loved to dance, and you could dance for hours to the music of the Velvet Underground. A dissonant surf doo-wop drone allowing you to move very fast or very slow. It was my late and revelatory introduction to “Sister Ray.”—Patti Smith, while reminiscing Lou Reed, on first seeing The Velvet Underground at Max’s Kansas City in 1970.
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*That poor old lady, still reading books, her hair must be gray under that blue
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Kathy Fagan, “California, She Replied.” #Poetry in issue 129, Winter 1993. by parisreview http://ift.tt/19SHjTA
California, indeed.
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An inspirational collection of photographs of swimming holes in this great state.
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Artist, geometer, educator, Reynolds displays an incredible expertise in geometric systems in his drawings.
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Early 1970s magazine documenting the radical shift as low-cost portable video equipment became available to artists and other potential videomakers.
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Lists of books from designers to inspire, to provide direction, to educate.
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This visualization maps 1 million WWI Royal Navy locations transcribed by the citizen scientists of Old Weather.
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