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AN INTRODUCTION TO DIGIBYTE
DigiByte
What are cryptocurrencies? Cryptocurrencies are peer to peer technology protocols which rely on the block-chain; a system of decentralized record keeping which allows people to exchange unmodifiable and indestructible information “coins,” globally in little to no time with little to no fees – this translates into the exchange of value as these coins cannot be counterfeit nor stolen. This concept was started by Satoshi Nakamoto (allegedly a pseudonym for a single man or organization) whom described and coded Bitcoin in 2009. What is DigiByte? DigiByte (DGB) is a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. It is also a decentralized applications protocol in a similar fashion to Neo or Ethereum. DigiByte was founded and created by Jared Tate in 2014. DigiByte allows for fast (virtually instant) and low cost (virtually free) transactions. DigiByte is hard capped at 21 billion coins which will ever be mined, over a period of 21 years. DigiByte was never an ICO and was mined/created in the same way that Bitcoin or Litecoin initially were. DigiByte is the fastest UTXO PoW scalable block-chain in the world. We’ll cover what this really means down below. DigiByte has put forth and applied solutions to many of the problems that have plagued Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general – those being:
Maintaining decentralisation.
Maintaining low fees.
Maintaining fast transaction times.
Maintaining robust security + the immutable ledger.
And most importantly assuring massive scalability on chain.
We will address these point by point in the subsequent sections. The DigiByte Protocol DigiByte maintains these properties through use of various technological innovations which we will briefly address below. Why so many coins? 21 Billion When initially conceived Bitcoin was the first of a kind! And came into the hands of a few! The beginnings of a coin such as Bitcoin were difficult, it had to go through a lot of initial growth pains which following coins did not have to face. It is for this reason among others why I believe Bitcoin was capped at 21 million; and why today it has thus secured a place as digital gold. When Bitcoin was first invented no one knew anything about cryptocurrencies, for the inventor to get them out to the public he would have to give them away. This is how the first Bitcoins were probably passed on, for free! But then as interest grew so did the community. For them to be able to build something and create something which could go on to have actual value, it would have to go through a steady growth phase. Therefore, the control of inflation through mining was extremely important. Also, why the cap for Bitcoin was probably set so low - to allow these coins to amass value without being destroyed by inflation (from mining) in the same way fiat is today! In my mind Satoshi Nakamoto knew what he was doing when setting it at 21 million BTC and must have known and even anticipated others would take his design and build on top of it. At DigiByte, we are that better design and capped at 21 billion. That's 1000 times larger than the supply of Bitcoin. Why though? Why is the cap on DigiByte so much higher than that of Bitcoin? Because DigiByte was conceived to be used not as a digital gold, nor as any sort of commodity, but as a real currency! Today on planet Earth, we are approximately 7.6 billion people. If each person should want or need to use and live off Bitcoin; then equally split at best each person could only own 0.00276315789 BTC. The market cap for all the money on the whole planet today is estimated to have recently passed 80 trillion dollars. That means that each whole unit of Bitcoin would be worth approximately $3,809,523.81! $3,809,523.81 This is of course in an extreme case where everyone used Bitcoin for everything. But even in a more conservative scenario the fact remains that with such a low supply each unit of a Bitcoin would become absurdly expensive if not inaccessible to most. Imagine trying to buy anything under a dollar! Not only would using Bitcoin as an everyday currency be a logistical nightmare but it would be nigh impossible. For each Satoshi of a Bitcoin would be worth much, much, more than what is realistically manageable. This is where DigiByte comes in and where it shines. DigiByte aims to be used world-wide as an international currency! Not to be hoarded in the same way Bitcoin is. If we were to do some of the same calculations with DigiByte we'd find that the numbers are a lot more reasonable. At 7.6 billion people, each person could own 2.76315789474 DGB. Each whole unit of DGB would be worth approximately $3,809.52. $3,809.52 This is much more manageable and remember in an extreme case where everyone used DigiByte for everything! I don't expect this to happen anytime soon, but with the supply of DigiByte it would allow us to live and transact in a much more realistic and fluid fashion. Without having to divide large numbers on our phone's calculator to understand how much we owe for that cup of coffee! With DigiByte it's simple, coffee cost 1.5 DGB, the cinema 2.8 DGB, a plane ticket 500 DGB! There is a reason for DigiByte's large supply, and it is a good one! Decentralisation Decentralisation is an important concept for the block-chain and cryptocurrencies in general. This allows for a system which cannot be controlled nor manipulated no matter how large the organization in play or their intentions. DigiByte’s chain remains out of the reach of even the most powerful government. This allows for people to transact freely and openly without fear of censorship. Decentralisation on the DigiByte block-chain is assured by having an accessible and fair mining protocol in place – this is the multi-algorithm (MultiAlgo) approach. We believe that all should have access to DigiByte whether through purchase or by mining. Therefore, DigiByte is minable not only on dedicated mining hardware such as Antminers, but also through use of conventional graphics cards. The multi-algorithm approach allows for users to mine on a variety of hardware types through use of one of the 5 mining algorithms supported by DigiByte. Those being:
Scrypt
SHA256
Qubit
Skein
Groestl
Please note that these mining algorithms are modified and updated from time to time to assure complete decentralisation and thus ultimate security. The problem with using only one mining algorithm such as Bitcoin or Litecoin do is that this allows for people to continually amass mining hardware and hash power. The more hash power one has, the more one can collect more. This leads to a cycle of centralisation and the creation of mining centres. It is known that a massive portion of all hash power in Bitcoin comes from China. This kind of centralisation is a natural tendency as it is cheaper for large organisations to set up in countries with inexpensive electricity and other such advantages which may be unavailable to the average miner. DigiByte mitigates this problem with the use of multiple algorithms. It allows for miners with many different kinds of hardware to mine the same coin on an even playing field. Mining difficulty is set relative to the mining algorithm used. This allows for those with dedicated mining rigs to mine alongside those with more modest machines – and all secure the DigiByte chain while maintaining decentralisation. Low Fees Low fees are maintained in DigiByte thanks to the MultiAlgo approach working in conjunction with MultiShield (originally known as DigiShield). MultiShield calls for block difficulty readjustment between every single block on the chain; currently blocks last 15 seconds. This continuous difficulty readjustment allows us to combat any bad actors which may wish to manipulate the DigiByte chain. Manipulation may be done by a large pool or a single entity with a great amount of hash power mining blocks on the chain; thus, increasing the difficulty of the chain. In some coins such as Bitcoin or Litecoin difficulty is readjusted every 2016 blocks at approximately 10mins each and 2mins respectively. Meaning that Bitcoin’s difficulty is readjusted about every two weeks. This system can allow for large bad actors to mine a coin and then abandon it, leaving it with a difficulty level far too high for the present hash rate – and so transactions can be frozen, and the chain stopped until there is a difficulty readjustment and or enough hash power to mine the chain. In such a case users may be faced with a choice - pay exorbitant fees or have their transactions frozen. In an extreme case the whole chain could be frozen completely for extended periods of time. DigiByte does not face this problem as its difficulty is readjusted per block every 15 seconds. This innovation was a technological breakthrough and was adopted by several other coins in the cryptocurrency environment such as Dogecoin, Z-Cash, Ubiq, Monacoin, and Bitcoin Gold. This difficulty readjustment along with the MultiAlgo approach allows DigiByte to maintain the lowest fees of any UTXO – PoW – chain in the world. Currently fees on the DigiByte block-chain are at about 0.0001 DGB per transaction of 100 000 DGB sent. This depends on the amount sent and currently 100 000 DGB are worth around $2000.00 with the fee being less than 0.000002 cents. It would take 500 000 transactions of 100 000 DGB to equal 1 penny’s worth. This was tested on a Ledger Nano S set to the low fees setting. Fast transaction times Fast transactions are ensured by the conjunctive use of the two aforementioned technology protocols. The use of MultiShield and MultiAlgo allows the mining of the DigiByte chain to always be profitable and thus there is always someone mining your transactions. MultiAlgo allows there to a greater amount of hash power spread world-wide, this along with 15 second block times allows for transactions to be near instantaneous. This speed is also ensured by the use DigiSpeed. DigiSpeed is the protocol by which the DigiByte chain will decrease block timing gradually. Initially DigiByte started with 30 second block times in 2014; which today are set at 15 seconds. This decrease will allow for ever faster and ever more transactions per block. Robust security + The Immutable Ledger At the core of cryptocurrency security is decentralisation. As stated before decentralisation is ensured on the DigiByte block chain by use of the MultiAlgo approach. Each algorithm in the MultiAlgo approach of DigiByte is only allowed about 20% of all new blocks. This in conjunction with MultiShield allows for DigiByte to be the most secure, most reliable, and fastest UTXO block chain on the planet. This means that DigiByte is a proof of work (PoW) block-chain where all transactional activities are stored on the immutable public ledger world-wide. In DigiByte there is no need for the Lightning protocol (although we have it) nor sidechains to scale, and thus we get to keep PoW’s security. There are many great debates as to the robustness or cleanliness of PoW. The fact remains that PoW block-chains remain the only systems in human history which have never been hacked and thus their security is maximal. For an attacker to divert the DigiByte chain they would need to control over 93% of all the hashrate on one algorithm and 51% of the other four. And so DigiByte is immune to the infamous 51% attack to which Bitcoin and Litecoin are vulnerable. Moreover, the DigiByte block-chain is currently spread over 200 000 plus servers, computers, phones, and other machines world-wide. The fact is that DigiByte is one of the easiest to mine coins there is – this is greatly aided by the recent release of the one click miner. This allows for ever greater decentralisation which in turn assures that there is no single point of failure and the chain is thus virtually un-attackable. On Chain Scalability The biggest barrier for block-chains today is scalability. Visa the credit card company can handle around 2000 transactions per second (TPS) today. This allows them to ensure customer security and transactional rates nation-wide. Bitcoin currently sits at around 7 TPS and Litecoin at 28 TPS (56 TPS with SegWit). All the technological innovations I’ve mentioned above come together to allow for DigiByte to be the fastest PoW block-chain in the world and the most scalable. DigiByte is scalable because of DigiSpeed, the protocol through which block times are decreased and block sizes are increased. It is known that a simple increase in block size can increase the TPS of any block-chain, such is the case with Bitcoin Cash. This is however not scalable. The reason a simple increase in block size is not scalable is because it would eventually lead to some if not a great amount of centralization. This centralization occurs because larger block sizes mean that storage costs and thus hardware cost for miners increases. This increase along with full blocks – meaning many transactions occurring on the chain – will inevitably bar out the average miner after difficulty increases and mining centres consolidate. Hardware cost, and storage costs decrease over time following Moore’s law and DigiByte adheres to it perfectly. DigiSpeed calls for the increase in block sizes and decrease in block timing every two years by a factor of two. This means that originally DigiByte’s block sizes were 1 MB at 30 seconds each at inception in 2014. In 2016 DigiByte increased block size by two and decreased block timing by the same factor. Perfectly following Moore’s law. Moore’s law dictates that in general hardware increases in power by a factor of two while halving in cost every year. This would allow for DigiByte to scale at a steady rate and for people to adopt new hardware at an equally steady rate and reasonable expense. Thus so, the average miner can continue to mine DigiByte on his algorithm of choice with entry level hardware. DigiByte was one of the first block chains to adopt segregated witness (SegWit in 2017) a protocol whereby a part of transactional data is removed and stored elsewhere to decrease transaction data weight and thus increase scalability and speed. This allows us to fit more transactions per block which does not increase in size! DigiByte currently sits at 560 TPS and could scale to over 280 000 TPS by 2035. This dwarfs any of the TPS capacities; even projected/possible capacities of some coins and even private companies. In essence DigiByte could scale worldwide today and still be reliable and robust. DigiByte could even handle the cumulative transactions of all the top 50 coins in coinmarketcap.com and still run smoothly and below capacity. In fact, to max out DigiByte’s actual maximum capacity (today at 560 TPS) you would have to take all these transactions and multiply them by a factor of 10! Oher Uses for DigiByte Note that DigiByte is not only to be used as a currency. Its immense robustness, security and scalability make it ideal for building decentralised applications (DAPPS) which it can host. DigiByte can in fact host DAPPS and even centralised versions which rely on the chain which are known as Digi-Apps. This application layer is also accompanied by a smart contract layer. Thus, DigiByte could host several Crypto Kitties games and more without freezing out or increasing transaction costs for the end user. Currently there are various DAPPS being built on the DigiByte block-chain, these are done independently of the DigiByte core team. These companies are simply using the DigiByte block-chain as a utility much in the same way one uses a road to get to work. One such example is Loly – a Tinderesque consensual dating application. DigiByte also hosts a variety of other platform projects such as the following:
DigiPay – A jqeury online payment protocol portal web plugin.
DigiByte DigiHash - The official DigiByte foundation mining pool.
DigiByte Digi-ID – A platform for identity verification to be used in lieu of two factor authentication and passwords.
DigiByte Playground – An interactive Javascript sandbox for developers.
DigiByte Emma AI – A DigiByte interactive artificial intelligence assistant.
DigiByte DigiMan – A web browser plugin to be used as a security layer two protocol.
DigiByte DigiSeeder – A background seeding service which assures all wallets quickly find other peers in the network.
DigiByte DigiMessenger – A ground-breaking messaging application built on top of DigiByte which features robust and virtually unbreakable encryption.
DigiByte OneClickMiner – An easy to set up application which allows users to quickly start mining DigiByte on their home machines.
DigiByte DigiBot – A telegram bot for users to interact with DigiByte and more.
The DigiByte Foundation As previously mentioned DigiByte was not an ICO. The DigiByte foundation was established in 2017 by founder Jared Tate. Its purpose is as a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and developing the DigiByte block-chain. DigiByte is a community effort and a community coin, to be treated as a public resource as water or air. Know that anyone can work on DigiByte, anyone can create, and do as they wish. It is a permissionless system which encourages innovation and creation. If you have an idea and or would like to get help on your project do not hesitate to contact the DigiByte foundation either through the official website and or the telegram developer’s channel. For this reason, it is ever more important to note that the DigiByte foundation cannot exist without public support. And so, this is the reason I encourage all to donate to the foundation. All funds are used for the maintenance of DigiByte servers, marketing, and DigiByte development. DigiByte Resources and Websites DigiByte
DigiByte.io
DigiByteFoundation.org
DigiExplorer.info
DigiHash.co
DigiByteNetwork.com
Wallets
Windows Wallet
OS X Wallet
DigiByte Go
Android Wallet
iOS Wallet
Rasberry Pi Wallet
Trezor Hardware
Ledger Hardware Wallet
Explorers
Digiexplorer.info
chainz.cryptoid.info/DGB
Please refer to the sidebar of this sub-reddit for more resources and information. Edit - Removed Jaxx wallet. Edit - A new section was added to the article: Why so many coins? 21 Billion Edit - Adjusted max capacity of DGB's TPS - Note it's actually larger than I initially calculated. Edit – Grammar and format readjustment Hello, I hope you’ve enjoyed my article, I originally wrote this for the reddit sub-wiki where it generally will most likely, probably not, get a lot of attention. So instead I've decided to make this sort of an introductory post, an open letter, to any newcomers to DGB or for those whom are just curious. I tried to cover every aspect of DGB, but of course I may have forgotten something! Please leave a comment down below and tell me why you're in DGB? What convinced you? Me it's the decentralised PoW that really convinced me. Plus, just that transaction speed and virtually no fees! Made my mouth water! -Dereck de Mézquita I'm a student typing this stuff on my free time, help me pay my debts? Thank you! D64fAFQvJMhrBUNYpqUKQjqKrMLu76j24g https://digiexplorer.info/address/D64fAFQvJMhrBUNYpqUKQjqKrMLu76j24g
Hello everyone! Today I would like to talk about couple topics that are related with GPU mining. Even if you have been mining for over 6 months, you might still need to read this guide for better profit. However, you might be a new miner but know everything I will be talking here, so, it is not about for how long you have been mining, it is about how well you know the mining world. First of all, decide what type of miner you are What I mean by "decide" is, whether you are mining for making money, or supporting a project, or just as a hobby. If you are mining for supporting a project, or as hobby, then you can skip this guide because this guide is mostly for people who are willing to make money out of their GPU or GPUs. While people with 1-2 GPUs wouldn't worry that much about money, people like me, who have over 20 GPUs would be willing to make some profit because most probably that's the reason why they have that many GPUs. If you are looking to make profit out of your GPUs, here are some points you should be considering before mining a crypto currency. There are thousands of different crypto currencies that can only be mined by GPUs. And their prices/difficulties/mining rewards are different. So, your main purpose should be making the MOST bucks, with the same equipment. Think of it like this, you have 10.000 USD worth of mining equipment, and there are 5 coins you can mine. And if you mine the coin A, you will be making 100USD worth of coins daily. But on the other hand, there is a coin C, which you believe in the project, and you are willing to sell some of those mined C for expenses such as electricity, and keep the rest of the C, for future investments. But, you know that by mining coin C, you are making 90 USD worth of coins daily. But since you are thinking like "hey mate, I'm gonna hodl, so no big deal, they'll be more valuable later!", you might be feeling okay. Instead of mining like this, you should be doing something else, for making more money, but you might say "Hey dude! I also wanna keep some of the coin C, how do I do that if I don't mine it?" Well, the answer is clear. Mine the most profitable coin at the moment, coin A. If you are willing to sell all the mined coins, coin A is the best choice for you. But if you are willing to keep some amount of coin C, it is still better if you mine coin A. First, you mine 100 USD worth coin A, then you exchange your mined coin A for coin C on the market. You will lose some amount of your mined coins due to exchange/deposit/withdrawal fees on exchanges. But even then, after transferring all mined coins A to coin C, you will be holding coin C worth around 98.5 USD. So, while mining coin C, you were making 90USD daily, but now you mined coin A, made some exchanges, and ended up with 98.5 USD worth coin C. At the and of the day, you have more coin C than you would have if you have mined coin C. Now you can sell some of those coins to cover expenses, and hodl the rest. Allright, this is mostly know thing, and what most of the miners do. However, the key point I would like to mention is not exactly that. I just wanted to show that even if you want to hodl some of the coins, you can hodl more of it by mining more profitable one and exchanging. Since this is clear now, we can focus the main thing I wanted to say. We know that there are thousands of different coins and many more coming to the market everyday. So, this is actually a big opportunity for the miners. Most of the miners are using websites such as coin market cap or what to mine but these websites are not showing the recent coins, or projects. So, according to the what to mine, I would be making 35USD daily with my mining rigs. However, thanks to my personal research, I am making around 60USD daily, which is almost the double of the amount that what to mine calculates. How do I do that? Simple, by spending little time on the internet, and finding new coins. I am mining coins that are mostly not listed on websites such as coin market cap, or what to mine, or other big mining calculators. I choose smaller / recent projects, which just got listed on a small exchange, but has enough volume that I can exchange mined coins daily. Because these coins are not listed on the big mining related websites, chances are high that you would be making more money by mining them, instead of something big. But since they have a place to get exchanged, you are lucky and you can mine + exchange and make more money. How do I find those coins? As I mentioned before, by research. Checking the different subreddits, joining different discord channels and making friends online. There were many times my friends sent me a message like "hey mate, I found a coin which is x2-x3 times more profitable than other known ones.". Or, I'm checking middle size mining pools, which frequently add new coins to their pools. They do the important work here, they find a new coin and make it available to mine, so all I have to do becomes check the coin info for exchanges -- do the mining profit calculations -- start mining. Also you can check "BitcoinTalk" for announcements. This is all depending on you, you can check other platforms that you know, and find the most profitable coin to mine. Also it would be better if you have a good OS for mining, since it would take a bit long if you can't change your configurations easily. Of course all these things, research, calculations, configurations etc. would costing your valuable time, but hey, if you can make x2-x3, even x5 in some cases, and you have a decent hashpower, spending time for these things would not be a problem. Before ending my words, I would like to say one last thing. Since "more miners, higher difficulty. Higher difficulty, fewer coins and fewer coins means less profit", you might not be able to find topics like *Hey dudes, mine coin A, profit is huge" on forums. So, you should be doing your own research instead of expecting such posts. ONE LAST, and final, THING If you have found a coin, that is really profitable, you can mine yourself + use mining rental services. Lets say there is a mineable coin, and you can mine 100 USD worth of it in one day with 1GH/s hashing power. Then you can check, for example nicehash for this algorithm. If people are renting 1GH/s hashpower for 80 USD, you can give 80USD, rent hashpower, mine 100USD worth of coins, sell them and make 20USD profit. Without even having the GPUs yourself, you can make money just by renting hashpower if you really have found a good coin to mine. Consider all the things I've said, and spend some time for research, and you would be making more money than you did before :) Have a good day everyone!
I’ve often wondered if there was anything else I could’ve said to change his mind. That happens with any unsettled argument though I suppose. People always imagine there’s an elusive combination of words and rationales that will open a person’s mind to our way of thinking. Except people are stubborn that’s for sure. Myself included. So I’m sure you’d say the real problem was that I wasn’t open enough to his way of thinking. You’d say if I opened my mental door a bit, been more charitable to his point of view, he would’ve responded in kind and I would’ve saved him. Which is wrong. Just as likely perhaps, if not more likely, I would’ve been ensnared by the same delusion which sealed his, well, I’d never call it fate. But I know you’d claim everything was inevitable all the same. Let’s get one thing out of the way. Yes, I was Roman Peters’ friend. In fact, I was probably his only friend. His only real friend anyway. Although, I should clarify since my wording isn’t at all clear, that I most certainly was not Roman’s friend when he died. Roman and I had stopped being friends long before his rather public suicide. We had our falling out before his… fall. Yes, I’ve seen the video. No, I won’t be sharing the link. Nobody should watch it. Hell, if those hosting the servers had a modicum of respect or even a shred of sense they’d take down that awful video immediately. Just get rid of it. Already I can now hear your loud complaints about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Which is fair. People have a right to know. However I can’t help but feel… I don’t know. It seems as though the ideas people prioritize no longer has anything to do with the ideas themselves. Instead importance is based on who opposes what. Ideas now are little more than mental parasites that feed on blood boiling outrage. The more toxic and viral an idea the more broadly it spreads. Again, I don’t know. Maybe the flame of human enlightenment was always destined to be either smothered by tyranny or choke itself out on its own smoke after sucking out all the air. Yes yes. I know what you have to say about the inevitable. Anyway, me shoving my head up my own pretentious ass isn’t convincing you of anything so we should instead go back to Roman. We met back in early elementary school. Specifically the Catholic school of Father Lloyd Van Tiem, or Flivit if you wanted to annoy the teachers by slurring the acronym. What you need to understand is that I can’t really remember how Roman and I became friends to begin with. We were too young for the pertinent details to stick. I’d imagine it was the same generic way everyone develops friends at that age though, just a standard confluence of common interests, general proximity, and plain luck. Inevitable, as you’d say. Still, there was one moment of our early friendship that I reflect on often. See, instead of being your standard dinosaur obsessed kid I was a bright eyed Egyptology child. Mummies and pyramids captured my imagination more than T-rexs and velociraptors. Ancient Egypt appealed to me the way I figure the mythic civilizations of Tolkien or Martin might appeal to others. This extended to the Egyptian religious pantheon, many I can still name off the top of my head, like Ra, Bastet, Osiris, Sobek, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Anubis, Maat, and also the lesser goddess Ammut but I’ll come back to her later. I think I’d just turned 10 when on particular slow school day — remember Catholic school — our teacher, not wanting to put too much effort in before the Easter long weekend, threw on the animated movie: The Prince of Egypt. Now, I knew it was about the story of Moses freeing the Hebrews from Egypt, so I expected the Egyptians were going to rightly be portrayed poorly. What I didn’t expect was the reaction of my classmates. Part way through the song ‘Playing with the Big Boys,’ the song where the dumb priests use smoke and mirrors to dismiss Moses’ calls for freedom, around then is when I first noticed the glances and occasional snickering. Apparently the chorus of the evil priests listing the names of the Egyptian gods reminded the class of me. At school, I was rather vocal about my passion for all things Egyptian. Why wouldn’t I be? I was a kid who liked talking about what I liked. Regardless, I became a pariah after that. Not immediately, but slowly everyone I previously considered my friend just plain stopped being friends with me. They’d treat me like a third wheel, never invite me to anything, even ditch me at recess if I tried to follow them. Except Roman stuck by me as I drifted further into social irrelevance. A bit of a loner himself, I think he saw in me an oddball like himself. He was always there. He was always willing to hang out. He always listened to what I had to say. I felt we could talk about anything, in a way I could never talk to my parents or teachers or anyone really. As close as I thought we were, it wasn’t until middle school that it sunk in how much of an ardent atheist Roman was. He probably kept that pretty quiet going to a religious school. Hold on. Let me just explain something first. Most people avoid discussing religiosity and ideas about god, (or capital ‘G’ God as I had been taught in religious studies). It’s one of those things that people learn not to talk about. But unlike money and politics, religion is too close to that other taboo we learn never to discuss: death. You undoubtedly prefer this silence. Which is why I refuse to be silent. Our class had been taken to church for some ceremony, at the end of grade eight, I forget exactly which one, it might have been Ash Wednesday but I think that would’ve been too solemn and I remember it being a rather boisterous affair. Whatever ritual it was, it had more than just our school in attendance, as I think parents and other members of the community were there as well. On the stage or pulpit, there was a soft-rock band with members ranging from late twenties or early thirties, the lead singer, a mop of molasses coloured hair over a plain crew neck T, was singing a song about how god and they love us all. I remember thinking it was a sweet sentiment, even if the underlying spiritual message felt uncompelling to my teenage self. The music was fine, the crowd seemed to like it, the worst I would have said was that the performance was inoffensive and benign. Which is hardly much of a critique. Except Roman, in his ill-fitting sport coat and smiley face graphic-T, smirked remarking, “Oh boy, a budget rock show where the singer says they love me? Oh lawd, I’m really feelin’ the Jesus now.” I burst out laughing far louder than the wry joke called for. Luckily with the music blaring, the teachers wouldn’t be lecturing me on my disrespect, as only Roman could see my gut busting delight. That’s it. That’s all it took was that simple comment. After that, I couldn’t help but see the tacky spectacle of it all. How forced and contrived it was, how it mostly just seemed like people were there because of obligation. After all, I was only there because the school made us go. It couldn’t have been much different for everyone else. I’ve been thinking about that moment more often lately. Did his small remark really change my mind and entire world view? Or was my mind fertile ground for the seed of that idea to take root and grow? Or I’d already believed what I believed and Roman just articulated it in a way that I hadn’t. Or most troubling of all, what if I didn’t really believe in anything and my mind conformed to the words of my one and only friend. When with Roman, do as the Roman does. After that, I followed him eagerly into the land of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. Borrowing his books, I started learning everything there was to know about theological philosophy that the teachers at our religious school either refused to tell us or were incapable of discussing themselves. Together, we’d share our thoughts on the bloody history of religions, the Problem of Evil, and how you could never prove a negative like god doesn’t exist. Likewise we’d take turns picking apart the fallacies of Pascal’s Wager, the Ontological Argument, and the Argument of Design. Those were some of my best memories with Roman. Drinking pop from the fridge in my garage, eating the weird pizzas we’d order from Mad Mike’s pizza aroud the block, playing Halo on the couch and big screen, and all the while talking like were the smartest guys in the world. As we left our Catholic elementary and middle schools behind, we entered Catholic High School. I finally started making other friends. A handful of other geeky nerdy guys. They were more interested in pizza and gaming than anything religion though. Roman seemed indifferent to my new friends. He was far more preoccupied fighting with Mr. Bauer, the school’s most openly devout teacher. My feelings toward Christianity hadn’t yet softened but Roman’s were clearly becoming more militant. From the safety of my conflict-averse sidelines, I secretly cheered Roman on whenever Mr. Bauer crossed a line. See, Mr. Bauer was a real piece of work. He seemed pleasant and cheery enough, pastel shirts, clean white trainers, a big white smile and perpetually soft spoken, but eventually without fail his bigotry would expose itself. Before any class Mr. Bauer would teach, he’d lead the class in prayer. Normally they were generic and unremarkable. Every so often though his prayers would go beyond the usual, “Thank you God for this beautiful day.” With a gentle smile, at least once a week his prayers were something to the effect of, “Help guide my students away from lives of sin.” Or “Give us the strength to resist our carnal temptation.” Whenever he prayed like this there was a fifty-fifty chance Mr. Bauer would elaborate on what exactly he meant by ‘life of sin’ or ‘carnal temptation.’ It could range from the condescending, “Help the girls find husbands to protect them from the unmarried lifestyle,” and “Give the boys hobbies to stop their idle urge for masturbation.” (By the way, in the three years I listened to him, Boys never needed protection from the unmarried lifestyle and girls simply didn’t possess the idle urge for masturbation.) And he could go way up past condescending to the outright hateful. “Please open those of misguided faith to the one true path to Heaven through you, Jesus Christ,” he’d say obliquely when Hussein was attending class. He was more direct with Melissa, “And save Melissa from any perversion of your sanctioned union. Bless her with God’s holy covenant between man and woman so as to rescue her soul from homosexuality.” Hussein and Melissa would usually try their best to ignore Mr. Bauer. It was Roman who retaliated. “How did god rescue you from homosexuality?” There was a few scattered snickers from the class. Mr. Bauer, oblivious to what Roman was trying to do, answered sincerely, “Why… God sent me my wonderful wife of course.” “Well its a good thing god sent her he did, otherwise who knows what might have happened. You might have knob-gobbled a guy if it weren’t for that.” There was more barely contained chuckling. “I…” Mr. Bauer wasn’t sure what to say, “I suppose that’s one way to frame it.” “Yeah, like if your wife hadn’t straightened you out, why, two dudes with big oily muscles might be sword fighting in your mouth right now while a third drills you from behind.” The laughs were spilling freely now, myself included. “Can you imagine that? I mean seriously, are you imagining that right now?” Mr. Bauer would then have to deal with the chorus of laughter. “Alright alright. Settle down. We’re getting off track here. Moving on.” By then of course, it would be too late, everybody would be on the same side. Not his. I admired Roman’s courage to stand up to Mr. Bauer like that. That wasn’t the only time either. Usually, Roman kept his cool while he made Mr. Bauer look like a fool. He deserved it. He was a dick. You might have something to say about what we deserve though. As we entered our last year of High School, Roman started butting heads with the other teachers too. Even the teachers that weren’t as outwardly religious as Mr. Bauer got some of his flak. His humour started taking on definite edge too. It was still in good fun, at least that’s how it seemed to me, but there was an undercurrent of meanness to his comments too. Even as I drifted away into my own separate circle of friends, I still sympathized with the perspective Roman was coming from. They, meaning the school, were trying to indoctrinate young minds into a belief system that could be outright harmful. In that regard, even if it wouldn’t change anything, a little rebellion isn’t just good but required. However, where he really crossed the line in my mind was with Mrs. Ellie Monk in our last year. She one of the younger teachers, also fairly religious, always wearing her little silver cross, but she never lectured anyone on faith. She taught our English class and one of the assignments was writing essays analyzing other pieces of literature. Roman, being the intellectual gadfly he was, wrote his essay on Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In it, Roman argued how the modern world needed more extreme measures than simply eating babies. ‘All babies should be aborted before they are born, and the foetus gruel should be processed into bio-fuel to replace society’s fossil fuel vehicles. It’s the only way to save the planet from climate catastrophe!’ I thought this was really funny. Ellie Monk however, did not. She tried speaking to him a discreetly during class while everyone else was busy working. Roman, however, quickly drew in an audience. “Abortion, abortion, abortion! You can’t make me stop saying it. It’s just a word.” “Roman,” Mrs. Ellie Monk had her jaw drop, “can’t you see that’s a sensitive topic that should be treated more seriously!” “Really? Because I think I treat the return to sender option for foetuses with the exact level of seriousness it deserves.” “It’s not— you can’t joke about babies being killed!” “Just because you say it’s baby killing, doesn’t make it true. They aren’t the same as babies. And if I were to submit to your demands and shut my mouth I’d implicitly be agreeing with you.” Up until this point, I was definitely rooting for Roman. “Just because its a joke to you, for others— for me it is deeply hurtful to have to hear these things. What you’re talking about is—is deeply personal to mothers everywhere.” “Yeah, well, some people were never meant to be mothers.” At this she covered her mouth and ran out of the room. She didn’t come back that day and the was a substitute the next. There had been rumours going around that Mrs. Ellie Monk had had a miscarriage a few months back. I knew this because Roman had told it to me earlier. Later, I’d try and convince Roman he had in fact crossed that invisible line. He disagreed. He said, “It’s not my problem if she can’t grow thicker skin. The sooner humanity grows out of its immaturity the better.” I felt I had no other choice but to drop the subject. I was conflict-averse after all. Shortly after that Roman began talking about a forum he frequented called Defiant CodeX, or DCX for short. It was named after some sci-fi book I never cared about, but was apparently filled with a bunch of humorous philosophy references. He’d talk about his online friends. How they really seemed to ‘get it’ whatever ‘it’ was. And he began describing concepts I wasn’t familiar with like trans-humanism and the singularity, going on long rants about the future of technology and humanity. I wish I’d paid more attention. It seemed interesting enough, but sometimes we’re just not interested in interesting things. When Roman got going on one of his speeches on the Law of Accelerating Returns, for some reason I’d often check out. I was reminded about how much I cared — or used to care — about Ancient Egypt. Years had passed since our class watched the Prince of Egypt, and in that time I hadn’t thought much about Egyptian Mythology at all. Briefly, with Roman recommending it, I frequented the DCX forum myself. I admit there were interesting gaming discussions, intense political debates, and a charming comic that I really quite enjoyed despite its slight pretentiousness. For the most part I stayed away from the same parts of the forum as Roman. He spent most of his time in the ‘Technology’ board, which didn’t seem very technologically focused at all in my opinion. Yes, I know your opinion on opinions and I don’t care. I don’t care because this is where I’d point to as the time Roman first found you. The two of us started hanging out less and less often after that. My other friends said good riddance. They said he was an unpleasant person to be around, he was too bitter, cynical, misanthropic. Needless to say, I hadn’t noticed. In the last few times we hung out, this was before we went off to pursue our different post-secondary educations, he did make one last ominous sounding reference. It was only in passing, and never emphasized, but he mentioned you by name. He mentioned the Basilisk. Whenever the topic switched to our post-High School plans, “Doesn’t matter. It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.” Something in the way he said that made me nervous, almost like it was a threat, and instantly put me on the defensive. Once again my conflict averse persona got in the way of challenging him to explain what he meant. Because of that, the phrase kept rattling away in the back of my mind. Around then is when I had my first dreams. I was cold. I was alone. Around me were braziers of green flame. The smoke billowed up into an infinite of blackness ceiling. On all sides were sheer blocks of sandstone with writing etched onto their surfaces. Hieroglyphics that I couldn’t read but almost understand. There was nowhere to go but straight down this hallway of speaking pictures. My feet slapped the unyielding rock with every step. These hard surroundings felt more real than my own ephemeral body and I felt naked and exposed in the narrow corridor. Forward and forward, there was nowhere to go but forward. I was forced to proceed, forced to follow my own slapping footsteps. Eventually, when the hall finally seemed to open up into a large cavernous space, I heard the growl. The sound was low, wide and flat toned, a noise that filled the perfumed air with an inhuman indifference — and hunger. In front of me chains clattered and slipped. In the centre of this room golden scales held a pristine and unburdened feather on one side, and a wet chunk of glistening meat in the other. This meat was a heart — my heart — and it weighed heavily, still pulsing quietly, pulling the chains of the scale down. Now I understood what this was. I made to run and grab my heart but it was too late. A long shadow snapped through the darkness. My heart was gone, replaced by the sounds of the empty chains, followed by chewing and ripping flesh. Then the shadow showed itself to me. Down through the clouds of smoke and illuminated by the sickly pale green haze, a crocodile head emerged, much larger than my entire body, with teeth longer than my arms. It drew nearer and I ran. I ran down the hallway from where I’d came. I ran and I ran. But I had nowhere to go. The hallway was endless. Soon I could hear a thundering beat. I thought it was my heart but my heart was gone. Behind me, the giant behemoth was chasing me and it was gaining on me. Closer and closer, the massive crodile head drew nearer. The scent of its moist breath dampening my back and neck. I’d scream the beast’s name, shout at it to spare me. It would open its mouth and right then — is where I’d wake up. Each time I’d be drenched in my own sweat. I chocked this up to the stress of being away from home for the first time and being buried to my neck in my coarse load. Still though, these dreams trouble me. As I said about the scales, I knew exactly what they were. They were the scales of Ma’at, which judges the worth of Egyptians when they reach the afterlife. There your heart is weighed against an ostrich feather and if judged impure, it would be devoured by Ammut, or Ammit as she’s sometimes called. A beastly goddess with the head of crocodile and a body of lion and hippopotamus — the three man-eating creatures known to the ancient Egyptians. Ammut, the devourer of the dead, would bring about the second death of the unworthy. As much as I tried to ignore this dream, I only had it once every few months after all, something greater troubled me about this dream, more than just the fact I was dreaming about Ammut. What worried me was how I didn’t call her Ammut. Right as she was about to eat me whole and I begged her not to, I called her: Basilisk. After my first year of school, with middling but hopefully improving grades, I returned home for the summer to work and save money for my next semester. I was hardly back for more than a day when Roman messaged me, asking to hang out. I hadn’t spoken to Roman at all since our High School graduation, and neither had a checked in on the DCX forums in all that time either. I felt like I didn’t know the person was going to be meeting. Which is why I suggested going for coffee, but Roman insisted on meeting at his place instead. He had moved out of his parents place for a small basement suite apartment. When he opened the door to greet me, I was shocked. He looked like a completely different person. Whereas before he had been a bit overweight, now he was lean. His hair had been cut down to almost a sheer buzz. Just about the only thing that looked similar was how he wore a suit jacket, now fitting well, over a plain T. He smiled widely despite the tired bags under his eyes. “Hey buddy, you made it! Get in here, man.” He greeted me with a hug and ushered me inside. His place was largely bare and furnished with only a couch and a few chairs. “How long have you had this place?” I asked. “A few months.” With little else to do but chat, Roman didn’t even have a TV after all, the conversation felt a little stilted. He seemed guarded but maybe he just didn’t have much to talk about. Somehow though we managed to stretch the small talk out for nearly an hour. Finally when it seemed there was nothing left in our conversation about nothing, I asked a question I‘d been meaning to ask since agreeing to meet, “Can I ask you something Roman?” “Shoot.” “What is the Basilisk?” At this the blood drained from his face. “How do you know about that?” “From you. You told me about it.” “No,” he shook his head in shocked disbelief, “No, I never.” “Yes, you said something like: ‘It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.’ It was practically your motto for a few weeks there.” Hearing this, some colour returned to his face. “Right. I suppose I did say that.” “So what? Are you going to tell me what it is or not?” He stared at me for a wordless five seconds before getting up from his chair and beckoning him to follow. He led me to his bedroom. At the door I could already feel an uncomfortable warmth escape. I don’t know what I expected Roman would show me, but all there was was a bare mattress with a single blanket in one corner, and a full floor to ceiling tower computer in the other. Blinking green, orange, red, and even purple standby lights lit up the corner like a black Christmas tree. Whirring fans blasted more heat into the room, while tangles of wires snaked in and out of the metal frame, one low to the ground connected a single monitor bolted to the wall with a pillow on the ground for a chair. The entire set up must cost a small fortune, as I’ve seen medium sized business with smaller servers than that. “Holy crap Roman, that rig is intense. What, are you mining bitcoin or something?” “No.” He said flatly. “This is the Basilisk.” “The… Basilisk is your computer?” Roman laughed, but there was no mirth, only exhaustion. “If it was just my computer, then I could just turn it off.” I still had no clue what the hell he was talking about. “Okay, so you’re trying to kill this Basilisk thing, what, is it a video game boss or—?” “Shhh!” He put a greasy palm over my mouth. His eyes were wide, scanning the room, “I didn’t say that. I never said that.” Annoyed, I pulled his hand from my face, “Roman, tell me what the Basilisk is damn it! Please, you’re scaring me man.” He swallowed, “I shouldn’t tell you. But you already know. So I guess the damage is done. The Basilisk is the A.I. we — humanity — will awaken. It will be a super-intelligence far beyond anything we can imagine, beyond the totality of human brainpower by orders of magnitude.” “So you’re trying to make this a.i. thing?” “Not just me. There are others out there spending all their time and money hastening the point of genesis.” All their money he said. I was reminded of how much the computer must have cost. “Roman, how much money did you waste on this?” “Hopefully enough. But I assure you, not a single dollar was wasted. You know, it was the time talking to you that I thought was a waste. But now I see, if I get you to help, then it’ll all be worth it.” “Help? There’s no way I’m helping.” If anything I was seriously fearing for Roman’s well being. It can’t be healthy for him to be spending everything he has on this computer. “Except you have to help now. Now that you know about the Basilisk, you have to help. Or else it will kill you a second time.” My blood went cold. I was reminded of my dreams with Ammut, the devourer. “What?” “The Basilisk will torture and punish anyone who knew about it and didn’t help speed up its genesis.” There was that genesis term again. “You said it was an a.i.. Why would an a.i. do that?” “Because the genesis of a Friendly A.I. will be the most value generating event ever, ever second that time point is pushed ahead is worth more than a hundred billion dollars spent curing cancer in terms of utility. Therefore this Friendly A.I. would know it must motivate people to speed up its genesis. To do that, it will create perfect simulations of everyone, and punish those who could have done more to help but chose not to. It’s pure logic.” This whole thing sounded crazy. My emotions began to get heated and I tried debating this absurd concept. For example, he kept using the term ‘Friendly A.I.’ to describe the intelligence that would condemn millions of people to unimaginable agony. When I pointed out that didn’t make any sense, such a horrible being couldn’t be described as anything remotely close to ‘friendly’, he balked. Said the term ‘friendly’ doesn’t mean what I think it means and lectured me on arbitrary human values. It seemed like every word was the opposite of what I thought it meant. He had an entire lexicon of words and justifications at the ready while I could barely understand half of what he was saying let alone point out any potential flaw with the logic. Other terms like ‘Modal Realism’, ‘Effective Altruism’, ‘Arithmetical Utilitarianism’ were thrown out like road blocks each time I thought my understanding was catching up. I couldn’t convince him of anything. I tried saying if he’s making the a.i. he should either just not make it at all or not make this cruel human torturer monstrosity. He said that it wasn’t cruel, that he wasn’t making anything, that some form of A.I. was inevitable, an the Basilisk was the best outcome. “Other A.I. that doesn’t care about people might wipe us all out for draining power away of its quark collision calculations or something equally esoteric in human utility.” Lastly I tried to explain how if this A.I. is only torturing simulations of people, then they aren’t exactly us. He dismissed this easily. “Will you be the exact same person you are today next year? Does that mean you don’t care what happens to the you in the future?” After that I had nothing left to say. “Brody, please leave. I only wanted to see my friend one more time before I leave tomorrow.” When I got home, I poured myself a tall glass of cheap whisky, and drank it instantly, a bad habit I picked up at during my first semester. But I still had to know. Sleep could wait. Slouching onto my computer, I decided to return to the DCX forums which might have some answers. They seemed much quieter now. Threads seemed to have on average a tenth of the comments as I remembered. In a alcohol induced buzz, I came right out and started my own thread titled, “What the Hell is the Basilisk?” In it I mentioned how I think my friend was getting obsessed with this thing and I needed to know what the hell was going on. In five short minutes my thread was deleted and my account banned from the DCX forums. ‘Breach of the Code of Conduct’ was the only immediate explanation given. When I contacted the mods to find out what I did wrong the moderator who got back to me said: “Nice try mipsqueak. You trolls from the institute have done enough damage here.” Institute? Mipsqueak? Calmly I went through the arduous process of explaining my sincere ignorance on what I did wrong and convincing the mod I wasn’t trolling, mostly through effusive apologizing and imploring the mod to check the age of my account. Eventually they relented, somewhat. “Alright. I’m going to lift your ban, but you should know that any mention of the ‘B’ is normally a one-way ticket to a perma-ban.” I did try sending one last message to the mod asking them if they could please tell me what had happened in the time I’d been away from the forums and why the ‘B’ was a taboo subject. They didn’t answer the first question except by way of crudely answering the second, “We banned all discussion of the ‘B’ and all related institute bullshit because people are fucking retarded.” Once again, I don’t care what you have to say about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Besides, it didn’t matter. It clicked the second time. I remembered the institute. It was last year. On the Technology board of DCX, one of Roman’s favourite haunts, people had long winded discussions on futurism. It was there where I first heard people talk about the Institute. The Machine Initiative Progress Institute, or MIPI, as far as I know, isn’t actually located in any geographical building. Instead they like to think of themselves as a loose consortium of like-minded futurists and researchers who believe in the coming eminence of artificial intelligence, and more than that, the Institute believes it is their duty to aid in that a.i.’s ‘genesis’. “A.I. will be the most important development humanity will make in the history of life itself. And the Institute is probably going to make it happen.” Roman once told me with glee. Later, if I hadn’t seen members of the Institute with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have ever believed they were real. For the longest time I thought the Institute was a fake front some internet randoms created on a whim to make themselves feel more important and relevant. Sort of like 4chan’s Anonymous except nerdier and lower profile. That night, my dream was the most intense it had ever been. From down the vast hallway to my doom, there was chanting. A voice would call out, and a hundred more would answer. It didn’t even sound like language, just monosyllabic mantras. They were closer to the martial shouts of soldiers in training than religious worship. “Ah. AH! Rah. RAH! Jah. JAH!” As I entered the grand room with incense and braziers of pale fire, masked men bowed up and down in supplication. A taller man in flowing robes that pooled at his feet stood behind the golden scales. Through the wisps of smoke I couldn’t see his face as he led the congregation to reflect his profane prayer. This time, the scale between my heart and the pristine white feather was in perfect and equal balance. A hush fell as the priest raised his hands. Carefully he lowered one, slowly, until the scales were tipped. That’s not fair! I wanted to shout but couldn’t as the chamber was drowned by the first croaking growl. I sprinted to run. Men caught me by the arms. Not only did they prevent my attempt to flee, worse, they forced me to watch. The giant crocodile that emerged above the priest, its yellowed teeth dripped with rot and viscera. Its hide peeled with disease and decay. The devourer of the dead itself dead, a reanimated husk. The priest tossed my heart into the air and with a snap the devourer swallowed it, further engorging its distended gullet. With each booming step of the devourer’s approach I pleaded with the men holding me to let me go. They ignored me as their chanting resumed. They continued ignoring me as the devourer stomped, crushing other worshippers beneath its massive paws. I tried convincing the men holding my arms would be eaten too but they drowned me out with louder and louder chanting. Right above me the devourer breathed a down-burst of moist rotten air like a river of death. Its teeth opened wide. Before I woke in a swamp of my own sweat, I almost felt the first jagged tooth as it punctured through, crunching my ribcage. I knew then I had to go one last time to talk to Roman before it was too late. At this point, I’m sure you’re quite dismissive of relying on dreams for guidance. Look at this primitive primate mind, using a dream in place of real facts and evidence. Well I don’t care what you think. Whether it was the sum collective of my subconscious thought, or my conscious categorical interpretation of figments, either way now I knew for certain that Roman was in danger. I arrived just in time to see Roman walking out of his place with his last box of computer components. He was carrying it to a black van with two guys loitering in front of it. Both were head to toe in black shoes and suits. Their hair was closely cropped with thick pomade pulling back the rest. Rather than the stereotypical men in black, they had a splash of vibrant colour in their flowery dress shirts and pocket squares, and the pair of them were not wearing sunglasses, instead they wore cruel smiles and fatigue rims around their eyes. One nudged to get the other’s attention, then gestured to me and my appearance. He said something that they weren’t afraid I’d hear but was too far away regardless. That’s when they both laughed like they were the pinnacle of wit. I did my best to ignore them as I marched straight up to Roman. “What are you doing here?” He asked with an echo of the contempt I heard in the laugh. “I came to stop you. You don’t have to do this Roman. It’s not too late to turn back.” “Clearly you didn’t listen to a word I said last night.” “I was listening. Listen to yourself man. You’re being fed a bunch of lies by people who want to use you. This basilisk, it doesn’t exist. It’s not real.” He shook his head. “Wrong. It is real. It follows from a very logical set of propositions whose conclusio—” “Goddamn it Roman! There’s nothing logical about spending your life building a fucking torture robot!” “Here we go. More moralizing from a small mind.” “It’s not moralizing.” “Yes it is. It is human values blinding you to the greatness this A.I. will bring.” I put my hand on his shoulder, desperate to reach my former friend. “But you’re human. You don’t have to think like a machine.” Tired, he looked straight into my eyes. Then he shrugged off my touch and walked away without another word. I never saw him again after the van drove away down the block and out of view. At least not in person. When next I saw Roman it was years later through a recording of his livestream. Of course, only the start of the video showed his face. He looked almost gaunt and malnourished by then. His manifesto was littered with random internet garbage but reading between the lines I could see the lethal project he was really working towards. Whether anyone in the press or any politician could see what his true objective had been I don’t know, but judging from the comments I read online some people clearly heard him loud and clear. The institute, if they still call themselves that or whether they rebranded, they must be pleased Roman brought them so many more recruits. I’ve played out our last argument in my head so many times. I’ve wondered what more or else I could have said. Roman was right about one thing though. At least in part. I don’t know whether or not the Basilisk is real. Maybe I’m not smart enough to know. But whether or not there is an A.I. that will torture me for disobedience, a Basilisk that seeks to control my actions and my life, let me write this down for future posterity: I don’t believe in you.
https://preview.redd.it/2erlvx29qer21.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=1e387b209ea03d4b77c74a0e82feeea4324c3d4b Dear Investors! We have already announced the official Tkeycoin network release date - April 5, 2019. The days are passing by and the release date is getting closer, meaning it’s high time to talk about the mining of TKEY cryptocurrency. The first publication on the subject is already available on our Facebook page (just in case you missed it). We talked about the PoW algorithm, Bitcoin mining history and mining hardware evolution, Tkeycoin mining features etc. The article was really informative, and we recommend you to read (or re-read) it before you start the second part. Today we will talk about some mining issues that we haven’t yet mentioned. Let’s start with SHA-256 algorithm, as it will be also used for Tkeycoin mining. It stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm, developed by The US National Security Service. The main advantage of this algorithm is its ability to efficiently compress data and the zero probability of collisions. In simple words, SHA-256 is safe, quick and universal. According to the US law, SHA-256 may be used by both individuals and commercial organizations. It is not surprising that SHA-256 was applied to cryptocurrencies - this algorithm allows to encrypt any amount of data, converting it into a compact line of cryptographic hash. It is very important for mining, as miners can encrypt all the transactions in one block, producing an output hash value of the fixed size. When miners manage to find the right hash, the block is considered solved and is added to the blockchain. This is exactly how cryptocurrencies are mined. As the process is actually based on random guessing, miners with more computing power are the first to find the right hash. As we have already mentioned, SHA-256-based mining is possible with CPUs, GPUs and ASICs. And if the first 2 options (processors and video cards respectively) are familiar to everyone, the third one may be confusing both for beginners and experienced miners. ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) is a type of hardware customized for a specific computer task. ASIC miners are suitable only for cryptocurrency mining. They use the circuits specifically created for efficient solving of hash puzzles. Even ASIC physical design meets the basic needs of mining - for example, they normally have very efficient cooling systems. ASICs pay off pretty quickly, feature less energy consumption (compared with GPU analogs) and bigger hashrates. Also, as we have already said, they are provided with better cooling systems. Naturally, this type of mining hardware has its drawbacks, too. For instance, you can only use it for mining one or several cryptocurrencies, based on a certain algorithm. Besides, ASICs are fast to become obsolete. But, despite all this, they are normally a profitable investment. To mine Tkeycoin you may use a wide variety of ASICs by Bitmain (Antminer S9, S11, T15), DragonMint T1, Ebang Communication, WhatsMiner M3 etc. It’s important to note that you will also be able to mine TKEY cryptocurrency with already ‘obsolete’ hardware, because in our case the network difficulty will be comparable with the early stages of Bitcoin existence. We will publish more details and numbers soon, after we have tested the network and made the preliminary calculations. Anyway, you still have enough time for choosing your mining hardware, as ASIC and GPU mining will be unavailable during the first month of the network existence. Our team will need a certain amount of time for public network testing and tuning. Until this process is over, it will only be possible to mine Tkeycoin using PCs, laptops and smartphones. As soon as we have completed all the necessary tests and stabilized the mining process, all the users will become able to mine the coins with ASICs, cloud-mining services, and GPU rigs - whatever option they prefer or can afford. For your convenience, we will also release a special mining profitability calculator that will help you choose the perfect hardware for your needs, resources and desired profit level. Until then you may use for this purpose any of the dozens calculators already available online. About mining pools. As we mentioned earlier, we will start an official Tkeycoin mining pool that will let TKEY miners unite their computing powers. Besides, we plan to publish the source code, thus allowing thousands of enthusiasts worldwide to create their own pools for Tkeycoin mining. In conclusion, there will be no limits for Tkeycoin mining. So far, we have received a lot of questions concerning this issue. No, there will not be any limits (like 3000 coins or whatever). Tkeycoin mining will be available for anyone, we mean it. Don’t forget to subscribe to our social media pages and follow the news of the project. Soon, we will come up to you with some tech specs and more related details, including the size of reward for solving a block. Check your news feed regularly not to miss anything! See you soon! Your Tkeycoin Team
What's more profitable? Mining gear vs inital BTC investment. A multivariable optimization problem
I originally posted this in /gpumining but I figured people here might get something out of it too since it relates very much to NiceHash I'm sharing my own calculations here. I'm not asking anyone to answer the question for me, unless they feel like doing so. Scroll down for results/plots if tl;dr I'm currently in a spot where I have a halfway decent desktop PC and I want to start mining cryptos, both in order to make extra money and for the fun of it. Although I think I would enjoy mining cryptocurrencies and the challenges associated with it, I also need to ask myself whether it is worth to invest the money in the extra gear, or am I better off just investing that money into bitcoin instead? Especially considering that mining is not as profitable as it used to be. I intend to get a feel for the problem by doing some calculations on my own instead of relying on the typical online ROI investment calculator as they don't really take the appreciating value of BTC into account. I'm specifically looking at these variables 1) Profits/day/GPU 2) How many GPU's to buy to maximize profits (this is not necessarily obvious as you'll see) whereas the electricity and gear costs are assumed to be constant. The specifics of my particular scenario are (that I think is pretty common for people with a gaming PC and haven't started hardcore mining yet):
I already have a desktop PC with a GTX 1060 3gb with the possibility of adding 2 more GPU's via riser cards to the existing motherboard.
If I want to add more than additional 2 GPU's I will have to invest in a whole new rig with all that entails.
Compared to investing those expenses straight in to bitcoin, are the two additional GPU's to my existing rig worth it? Is it worth investing in an additional dedicated mining rig and add as many GPU's as I see fit as well? For what ranges of profitability per GPU per day does it make sense to invest in additional mining gear? For these calculations I make the following (somewhat arbitrary but hopefully reasonable) assumptions:
I assume that Bitcoin will, on average, continue to grow in value by approximately 0.45% every day which is fairly bullish, but not overly so considering the last 12 months that has seen growth at around 0.65%/day. These values are obviously averages and not exact daily predictions given the volatility of bitcoin.
I use NiceHash for mining, meaning that I receive my payments in Bitcoin. I intend to mine for approximately 2 years.
I assume that the daily profits from mining are determined by whatever dollars I get for the hashrate per GPU, which means that the amount of bitcoin received from NiceHash will decrease proportionally with the increase of Bitcoins price.
I don't assume a particular $/day figure for my additional GTX1060's, rather I look at a wider range of profit/day to see when it becomes profitable. This also accounts for some of the bitcoin vs altcoin complexity that determines the profits by using NiceHash.
I assume an additional rig would cost me ~$400 (minus GPU's) and that the electricity costs me ~$0.11/kwh.
Any additional GPU's will be GTX 1060 3gb at ~$235 each.
Results 3D plot Since the profits depend on both the number of GPU's and the profit/day figures I decided to plot it as a 3D-surface: Results, 3D plot The plot on the left is the profit made from investing in mining gear instead of an equivalent investment in bitcoin. The plot on the right is the total profit when only considering fiat money that doesn't change in value, which is what you'd typically consider. 2D plot Results, 2D plot This is the same results as the left plot in the above 3D plot but compressed into to the perhaps more familiar 2D graph environment. What to make of this? First of all it is trivial to conclude that I will make a return of my investment in fiat, no matter the configuration or the profit/day range. Even a pretty conservative $0.8/day pays off pretty decently. However this doesn't say anything about whether it's better than an initial bitcoin investment. When considering the appreciating value of bitcoin, it gets a little more interesting. I can safely say that at the $/day profits that we get for a 1060 these days (around $0.9-$1.3) it would be a bad investment to buy an additional rig. However, if the profits were to go up to the +$2 range again I'd could start making bank by getting as many mining rigs as I possibly can. At +$1.4/day I might consider getting an additional two GPU's for my existing PC as can be seen in the 2D plot. Looking at the above plots, at these currently low profit rates that we see today I'm better off letting my current 1060 mine away and invest the rest of the money in bitcoin. Hopefully some of you might find this useful or enjoyable lol
Hi, it’s some weeks that I’m getting into Monero and I really see a great future for it. My problem is that I have a very low budget so my mining capability is a joke (around 80 h/s). I cannot help this coin to grow by mining it, so I’m making this FAQ hoping that can be useful for new users. If you want to support me, the tip jar is at the end of this post. Thank you!
I noticed a lot of confusion around Monero. Many of the most asked question are basically the same , so I collected some of them from /monero, /moneromining and monero.stackexchange and I made this Monero Faq. Please feel free to suggest any new frequently asked question or correction/modification/ (also about the grammar, my english is not very good), i’d like to keep this post updated.
Minergate is known for being linked to Bytecoin (read here and here ) and many users are noticing lower or differences in hashrates when using other miners (just make a research using the word “minergate” here on reddit). don’t be fooled by the nice graphical interface.
What's more profitable? Mining gear vs inital BTC investment. A multivariable optimization problem
I'm sharing my own calculations here. I'm not asking anyone to answer the question for me, unless they feel like doing so. Scroll down for results/plots if tl;dr I'm currently in a spot where I have a halfway decent desktop PC and I want to start mining cryptos, both in order to make extra money and for the fun of it. Although I think I would enjoy mining cryptocurrencies and the challenges associated with it, I also need to ask myself whether it is worth to invest the money in the extra gear, or am I better off just investing that money into bitcoin instead? Especially considering that mining is not as profitable as it used to be. I intend to get a feel for the problem by doing some calculations on my own instead of relying on the typical online ROI investment calculator as they don't really take the appreciating value of BTC into account. I'm specifically looking at these variables 1) Profits/day/GPU 2) How many GPU's to buy to maximize profits (this is not necessarily obvious as you'll see) whereas the electricity and gear costs are assumed to be constant. The specifics of my particular scenario are (that I think is pretty common for people with a gaming PC and haven't started hardcore mining yet):
I already have a desktop PC with a GTX 1060 3gb with the possibility of adding 2 more GPU's via riser cards to the existing motherboard.
If I want to add more than additional 2 GPU's I will have to invest in a whole new rig with all that entails.
Compared to investing those expenses straight in to bitcoin, are the two additional GPU's to my existing rig worth it? Is it worth investing in an additional dedicated mining rig and add as many GPU's as I see fit as well? For what ranges of profitability per GPU per day does it make sense to invest in additional mining gear? For these calculations I make the following (somewhat arbitrary but hopefully reasonable) assumptions:
I assume that Bitcoin will, on average, continue to grow in value by approximately 0.45% every day which is fairly bullish, but not overly so considering the last 12 months that has seen growth at around 0.65%/day. These values are obviously averages and not exact daily predictions given the volatility of bitcoin.
I use NiceHash for mining, meaning that I receive my payments in Bitcoin. I intend to mine for approximately 2 years.
I assume that the daily profits from mining are determined by whatever dollars I get for the hashrate per GPU, which means that the amount of bitcoin received from NiceHash will decrease proportionally with the increase of Bitcoins price.
I don't assume a particular $/day figure for my additional GTX1060's, rather I look at a wider range of profit/day to see when it becomes profitable. This also accounts for some of the bitcoin vs altcoin complexity that determines the profits by using NiceHash.
I assume an additional rig would cost me ~$400 (minus GPU's) and that the electricity costs me ~$0.11/kwh.
Any additional GPU's will be GTX 1060 3gb at ~$235 each.
Results 3D plot Since the profits depend on both the number of GPU's and the profit/day figures I decided to plot it as a 3D-surface: Results, 3D plot The plot on the left is the profit made from investing in mining gear instead of an equivalent investment in bitcoin. The plot on the right is the total profit when only considering fiat money that doesn't change in value, which is what you'd typically consider. 2D plot Results, 2D plot This is the same results as the left plot in the above 3D plot but compressed into to the perhaps more familiar 2D graph environment. What to make of this? First of all it is trivial to conclude that I will make a return of my investment in fiat, no matter the configuration or the profit/day range. Even a pretty conservative $0.8/day pays off pretty decently. However this doesn't say anything about whether it's better than an initial bitcoin investment. When considering the appreciating value of bitcoin, it gets a little more interesting. I can safely say that at the $/day profits that we get for a 1060 these days (around $0.9-$1.3) it would be a bad investment to buy an additional rig. However, if the profits were to go up to the +$2 range again I'd could start making bank by getting as many mining rigs as I possibly can. At +$1.4/day I might consider getting an additional two GPU's for my existing PC as can be seen in the 2D plot. Looking at the above plots, at these currently low profit rates that we see today I'm better off letting my current 1060 mine away and invest the rest of the money in bitcoin. Hopefully some of you might find this useful or enjoyable lol
Is my computer good enough to be a profitable mining rig? (I'm new)
If it wasn't obvious already, I'm completely new to cryptocurrencies. I've only recently become interested in it and thought mining seems rather fun. However I'm not convinced in spending another few grand on a new computer just for mining when I already have a very high end workstation computer which I use to edit documentaries and short films. These are my specs: GPU: GeForce GTX 1080 in a 2 way SLI setup CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6800K CPU @ 3.60GHz Memory: 32 GB RAM (31.91 GB RAM usable) Storage: 1TB Samsung 960 M.2 SSD 3500MB/sR | 2100MB/sW, Samsung 850 EVO 2TB 2.5' SSD (540MB/sR | 520MB/sW), 6TB Toshiba 7200RPM HDD (200MB/s) Motherboard: Asus Intel X99 Deluxe-II with PCI-e 3.0 Current resolution: 3840 x 2160, 60Hz on Displayport Operating system: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Power supply: Corsair 1000W RMx Modular 80+ Gold Ultra Quiet My internet speed averages 5/10Mbps and I use a very strong Ethernet cable for connection (I never use wireless) Oh and I also use liquid cooling for the CPU but not the graphics card. I've tried using calculators online but I couldn't come to any specific conclusions, someone please put me out of misery and give my rig some kind of rating. How good is my rig for mining the following: Ethereum, ADA, Waves, XMR, Electroneum? Those are the only ones besides Ripple (which I know you can't mine) which have interested me so far, I'm staying away from Bitcoin though. Also I apologize in advance if this whole post is a stupid question.
New to mining. Electricity is free. What are some low cost hardware options that'll make enough for grocery costs?
I've been using nicehash on my gtx 1060 and my fx-8350 the last couple days, netting me a whopping $3.12 in 2 days. That's an extra 539 a year so it at least pays for 5/8ths of a months rent. However, I have about $450 to spare that I was going to use to buy bitcoin. I would like to, instead, buy a cheap mining rig that can at least make a couple hundred a month. At my current $46.8/month mining, I think a cheap dedicated rig could easily pull that off, right? I found a "AsicMiner Blade Block Erupter" for $50 on ebay that looks like it doesn't take much power, can be attached to my gaming rig's PSU, and gets 10Gh/s. My nicehash states im currently getting 29Mh/s, so that's a substantial, simple upgrade, right? All in all, if there are other options that I can easily attach to my computer, rather than a separate power supply, that's be amazing EDIT: i suspect my current 29Mh/s is wrong, or the online mining calculators are off, because when i plug in that rate it shows i make about $0.014 per year, which clearly doesnt match up. Can someone confirm this?
What's the difference between Litcoin and Bitcoin?
In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched bitcoin as the world’s first cryptocurrency. The code is open source, which means it can be modified by anyone and freely used for other projects. Many cryptocurrencies have launched with modified versions of this code, with varying levels of success. Litecoin was announced in 2011 with the goal of being the ‘silver’ to bitcoin’s ‘gold’. At the time of writing, Litecoin has the highest market cap of any mined cryptocurrency, after bitcoin. Here’s our guide to show you the crucial difference between bitcoin and litecoin. Mining differences Just like bitcoin, litecoin is a crytocurrency that is generated by mining. Litecoin was created in October 2011 by former Google engineer Charles Lee. The motivation behind its creation was to improve upon bitcoin. The key difference for end-users being the 2.5 minute time to generate a block, as opposed to bitcoin’s 10 minutes. Charles Lee now works for Coinbase, one of the most popular online bitcoin wallets. ASIC Mining For miners and enthusiasts though, litecoin holds a much more important difference to bitcoin, and that is its different proof of work algorithm. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, which involves calculations that can be greatly accelerated in parallel processing. It is this characteristic that has given rise to the intense race in ASIC technology, and has caused an exponential increase in bitcoin’s difficulty level. Litecoin, however, uses the scrypt algorithm – originally named as s-crypt, but pronounced as ‘script’. This algorithm incorporates the SHA-256 algorithm, but its calculations are much more serialised than those of SHA-256 in bitcoin. Scrypt favours large amounts of high-speed RAM, rather than raw processing power alone. As a result, scrypt is known as a ‘memory hard problem‘. The consequences of using scrypt mean that there has not been as much of an ‘arms race’ in litecoin (and other scrypt currencies), because there is (so far) no ASIC technology available for this algorithm. However, this is soon to change, thanks to companies like Alpha Technologies, which is now taking preorders. GPU mining To highlight the difference in hashing power, at the time of writing, the total hashing rate of the bitcoin network is over 20,000 Terra Hashes per second, while litecoin is just 95,642 Mega Hashes per second. For the time being, ‘state of the art’ litecoin mining rigs come in the form of custom PCs fitted with multiple graphics cards (ie: GPUs). These devices can handle the calculations needed for scrypt and have access to blisteringly fast memory built into their own circuit boards. There was a time when people could use GPU mining for bitcoin, but ASICs have made this method not worth the effort. If you are a developer, cryptocurrency investor, or just a curious person and want to invest some time to learn about cryptocurrency visit BTCNEWZ Transaction differences The main difference is that litecoin can confirm transactions must faster than bitcoin. The implications of that are as follows:
Litecoin can handle a higher volume of transactions thanks to its faster block generation. If bitcoin were to try to match this, it would require significant updates to the code that everyone on the bitcoin network is currently running.
The disadvantage of this higher volume of blocks is that the litecoin blockchain will be proportionately larger than bitcoin’s, with more orphaned blocks.
The faster block time of litecoin reduces the risk of double spending attacks – this is theoretical in the case of both networks having the same hashing power.
A merchant who waited for a minimum of two confirmations would only need to wait five minutes, whereas they would have to wait 10 minutes for just one confirmation with bitcoin.
Transaction speed (or faster block time) and confirmation speed are often touted as moot points by many involved in bitcoin, as most merchants would allow zero-confirmation transactions for most purchases. It is necessary to bear in mind that a transaction is instant, it is just confirmed by the network as it propagates.
I hate my Fucking Mining Rig - Short Story of my mining adventure (Don't really hate it)
Wanted to write a short write up on my journey of Crypto mining for some of the newer people and people who want to get into it. Not trying to discourage anyone from starting, but want to show the progression of a newbie. So I am a good with computers and learned of Bitcoin when it was about $7 a coin. Laughed at the idea of some computer doing some math and getting some BS currency. Million dollar mistake on my part, but hindsight is always 20/20. Anyways, Learned about ethereum in May. Bought some at around $180 and bought all the way up to $330. Now to the mining rig. Ran all of the calculations and with a 180 hashrate and 900 watts I was gonna get 6-7 Eth per month. Shit was gonna be profitable in under 3 months. I was gonna be a fucking crypto allstar and be rich as fuck! Bought all of my parts literally the day before they were nonexistent. Literally bought the last RX480's from Amazon. Here is a list of my parts. Asrock board Pentium dual core processor 4 Gb of ram 128 gb SSD 1200 watt Rosewill PSU 6 Sata to Molex PCI Risers (Junk) 6 RX480's - 2 Asus Strix, 4 Gigabyte Total cost - Roughly $2,500 (Pennies compared to my future ROI) Please keep in mind that I am not posting every single miner issue that I ran into such as fucking with Wattman for a few weeks before learning about Trixx and Afterburner. I've built computers before, so that part wasn't hard. Set everything up and get windows 10 running. Problem 1 - Computer doesn't see all of the cards. Had to run the drivers a few times and tweak some shit, but got all 6 cards seen. Miner hurdle (See what I did there) but off to the races. Let's get this bitch running so I can begin planning my retirement. Get Claymore running, Got Trixx to overclock. Ran my cards at -96, 1200, 2200 fans at 85% (Cause I'm cool like that.) Major stability issues from the start. 1 card (Asus) would crash all the time. Didn't know about the watch dog feature in claymore that would restart my rig when a card crashed. Great feature but my computer would go into this state of having power, but not loading the operating system. Even if it did restart, most of the time claymore would get stuck right before setting the dag's and would just lock up. (Claymore program is awesome by the way, this was my rigs fault) Could not get this fucking Asus card to stop crashing, even on stock settings. Sent the bitch back RMA style. Asus said something was wrong and sent me a new one. Awesome, lets get this bitch running. I need to start looking at sick houses in Costa Rica to move to once I am rich as Fuck! New card makes things better for a few days. Not 100% stable but better. Go to vegas for a driving thing (Race cars - Future rich guy stuff) and this mechanical demon starts crashing every few hours. Luckily I had Google remote desktop installed so I could log on and restart it or change settings in Trixx. Had to have my GF unplug it and plug it in a few times. Get back home, fuck with this thing but still random crashes on random cards. Decide it is the PCI risers. Contact seller who will send me some more for free. Slow boat from china took two weeks to get them. They arrive but still some of them are bad. Can't seem to piece together 6 good ones. Did some research online (Ethereum Forum and Reddit) and decided to get some new style of risers V007 6 Pin to Sata ($70) and they take a month to get here. Plug them all in and they seem to be working much better. Decent stability, But I ain't got time for fucking stock bios. Let's ramp these bitches up and get 32 MHs per card at 600 watts from the wall! Actually flashing the bios was pretty easy. Thank you 6 pound 9 ounce baby jesus! Long story short had some major stability issues and bounced around with some different timing straps before finding the right ones. (Uber 3.1 for Samsung memory) So now that we've got some good hash speeds and decent stability let's ramp this private ATM up a little bit by dual mining some Decred. Get dual mining up and running. go to sleep. Wake up the next morning expecting to see myself on the top 100 forbes list. look at my mining rig stats on my phone and see that it died roughly and hour after I went to sleep. Walked toward my rig on the red carpet I had just installed and saw that it was off. Flicked on the light to check it out. No light, WTF? Well I'll be god damned, no power in this whole fucking room. Checked my breakers and sure enough this metal motherfucker tripped my breaker. No worries though. I'm smart as fuck. I'll just undervolt the shit out of it to get the power down. No way in hell I am just mining ether. I'm going balls to the wall! As you can expect I had many days of stability issues and tripped breakers. But fuck it, I have homeowners insurance. Burning it to the ground will be covered. (Didn't happen) My surge protector must be maxed out. Let's buy a bigger one ($25). Same issues. Fuck Decred, I'll mine SIA, less power. Damn I'm smart. Rig is more stable with Sia and no tripped breakers. Family medical emergency, have to fly north for a few days. But my rig has been fairly stable and I've got remote desktop if anything goes wrong. Arrive at airport, check mining stats, rig is down. No worries remote desktop. FUCK, not responsive, no way to remote into the rig and no way to remotely power it off and on. Lost 4 days of mining. But no worries the difficulty is only, Holy shit that's high! But the price of Ether will make up for it. Ether crashed to the $200's. Oh well, maybe a 10 room house in Costa instead of a 12. No sweat. Get back to my house and this whore of a machine is just sitting there in a computer coma. It's on but it's not. LED lights glaring at me like "Fuck you human, I ain't doing your stupid math problems!" Fuck you machine, I'm your master. You will do my math problems and you will fucking like it. My AMD Drivers seem to disappear and the computer goes into a coma like state. Someone on Reddit suggested using the 16.9.2 drivers. Installed and they worked better. Still random crashing. This shitty PSU must be maxed out. Fuck you PSU, I'm getting you a little brother (EVGA 750 gold $120.) What do you mean you have to jerry rig a second PSU so it starts without being connected to a motherboard? 2 more hours of my life wasted. But finally some stability. On my way to being fucking rich. I start looking at people in bentley's and can only laugh. You dumb fuck, I'm gonna be way richer then you. Gonna get a Bugatti for each day of the week. Damn this difficulty is a bitch. Fuck you Genesis Mining and your pallets of GPU's. You're killing me smalls! But anyway, on my way to rolling around in my fuck you money! Fuck you dag file 135, you're killing my future millions. Fuck you dag 138, you dropped me to 167 mhs. Thank god AMD was there to save my ass with their dope ass blockchain drivers. download, run DDU, Restart, install drivers, restart, run pixel patch, restart. Perfect, I'm in the money now! I can taste the caviar and champagne already. Now my cards only run 4 Mhs each. WTF? Try a bunch of the other new drivers. Same shit. Roll back to 16.9.2 and they run fine, just at 167 instead of 180. Someone on a forum said he had the same issue and did a fresh install of windows 10 and it worked. So I'll just reformat my SSD (Windows wouldn't do a fresh install within the operating system. Fuck you Bill Gates! Gonna buy you once I get this thing running at 180.) Format SSD, plug back in, throw in my gangster ass boot USB drive. Ramdisk error. Fuck you Bill Gates! Reformat SSD multiple times, lots of forum reading. Install windows from another computer through command prompt (I'm a coder now as well.) This shit has got to work, I did it in command prompt bitches! Same fucking error. Now down to an 8 bedroom house in Costa and only 6 Bugattis. Let's try unplugging my 6 cards and see if that works. Thank you 6 pound 9 ounce baby jesus. Windows installed. New drivers work and I'm back at 180! Raking in the cash now. With those speeds my Asus cards crashed. Had to dial down the hashrate to 177.5 for them to be stable. So now going to use some commands in claymore to run the Asus cards at lower speeds while letting my other cards mine harder. I wrote this to let people know that mining isn't all Bugatti's and caviar. These machines are fickle little cunts that do what they want. No system is the same. So when you post on a forum, people will give you advice on what may work. But what works for them, may not work on your rig. In the end it's up to you to figure it out. I have spent countless hours after work and on weekends working on this bitch. Hell I've probably spent a few hours just staring at it and thinking about all of the ways I could destroy it slowly. While I love Etheruem and do value the knowledge gained, I would have made more money just buying Eth and holding. The guys you see on youtube building sick rigs with crazy specs have been at it for a while. They have worked through the process and know how to solve all of the problems. You have not and will have to work them out on your own. My whore of a rig will pay for itself soon. But I would suggest that if you want to start building a new mining rig. Check the difficulty chart and make sure you have tons of free time to fuck with it. I'd post my wallet address for donations since I just saved you $2,600. But I am afraid hackers will steal my monies :) Hope you enjoyed my mining life story from the past few months.
Blockchain Glossary: From A-Z 51% Attack When more than half of the computing power of a cryptocurrency network is controlled by a single entity or group, this entity or group may issue conflicting transactions to harm the network, should they have the malicious intent to do so. Address Cryptocurrency addresses are used to send or receive transactions on the network. An address usually presents itself as a string of alphanumeric characters. ASIC Short form for ‘Application Specific Integrated Circuit’. Often compared to GPUs, ASICs are specially made for mining and may offer significant power savings. Bitcoin Bitcoin is the first decentralised, open source cryptocurrency that runs on a global peer to peer network, without the need for middlemen and a centralised issuer. Block Blocks are packages of data that carry permanently recorded data on the blockchain network. Blockchain A blockchain is a shared ledger where transactions are permanently recorded by appending blocks. The blockchain serves as a historical record of all transactions that ever occurred, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the name blockchain. Block Explorer Block explorer is an online tool to view all transactions, past and current, on the blockchain. They provide useful information such as network hash rate and transaction growth. Block Height The number of blocks connected on the blockchain. Block Reward A form of incentive for the miner who successfully calculated the hash in a block during mining. Verification of transactions on the blockchain generates new coins in the process, and the miner is rewarded a portion of those. Central Ledger A ledger maintained by a central agency. Confirmation The successful act of hashing a transaction and adding it to the blockchain. Consensus Consensus is achieved when all participants of the network agree on the validity of the transactions, ensuring that the ledgers are exact copies of each other. Cryptocurrency Also known as tokens, cryptocurrencies are representations of digital assets. Cryptographic Hash Function Cryptographic hashes produce a fixed-size and unique hash value from variable-size transaction input. The SHA-256 computational algorithm is an example of a cryptographic hash. Dapp A decentralised application (Dapp) is an application that is open source, operates autonomously, has its data stored on a blockchain, incentivised in the form of cryptographic tokens and operates on a protocol that shows proof of value. DAO Decentralised Autonomous Organizations can be thought of as corporations that run without any human intervention and surrender all forms of control to an incorruptible set of business rules. Distributed Ledger Distributed ledgers are ledgers in which data is stored across a network of decentralized nodes. A distributed ledger does not have to have its own currency and may be permissioned and private. Distributed Network A type of network where processing power and data are spread over the nodes rather than having a centralised data centre. Difficulty This refers to how easily a data block of transaction information can be mined successfully. Digital Signature A digital code generated by public key encryption that is attached to an electronically transmitted document to verify its contents and the sender’s identity. Double Spending Double spending occurs when a sum of money is spent more than once. Ethereum Ethereum is a blockchain-based decentralised platform for apps that run smart contracts, and is aimed at solving issues associated with censorship, fraud and third party interference. EVM The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a Turing complete virtual machine that allows anyone to execute arbitrary EVM Byte Code. Every Ethereum node runs on the EVM to maintain consensus across the blockchain. Fork Forks create an alternate version of the blockchain, leaving two blockchains to run simultaneously on different parts of the network. Genesis Block The first or first few blocks of a blockchain. Hard Fork A type of fork that renders previously invalid transactions valid, and vice versa. This type of fork requires all nodes and users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. Hash The act of performing a hash function on the output data. This is used for confirming coin transactions. Hash Rate Measurement of performance for the mining rig is expressed in hashes per second. Hybrid PoS/PoW A hybrid PoS/PoW allows for both Proof of Stake and Proof of Work as consensus distribution algorithms on the network. In this method, a balance between miners and voters (holders) may be achieved, creating a system of community-based governance by both insiders (holders) and outsiders (miners). Mining Mining is the act of validating blockchain transactions. The necessity of validation warrants an incentive for the miners, usually in the form of coins. In this cryptocurrency boom, mining can be a lucrative business when done properly. By choosing the most efficient and suitable hardware and mining target, mining can produce a stable form of passive income. Multi-Signature Multi-signature addresses provide an added layer of security by requiring more than one key to authorize a transaction. Node A copy of the ledger operated by a participant of the blockchain network. Oracles Oracles work as a bridge between the real world and the blockchain by providing data to the smart contracts. Peer to Peer Peer to Peer (P2P) refers to the decentralized interactions between two parties or more in a highly-interconnected network. Participants of a P2P network deal directly with each other through a single mediation point. Public Address A public address is the cryptographic hash of a public key. They act as email addresses that can be published anywhere, unlike private keys. Private Key A private key is a string of data that allows you to access the tokens in a specific wallet. They act as passwords that are kept hidden from anyone but the owner of the address. Proof of Stake A consensus distribution algorithm that rewards earnings based on the number of coins you own or hold. The more you invest in the coin, the more you gain by mining with this protocol. Proof of Work A consensus distribution algorithm that requires an active role in mining data blocks, often consuming resources, such as electricity. The more ‘work’ you do or the more computational power you provide, the more coins you are rewarded with. Scrypt Scrypt is a type of cryptographic algorithm and is used by Litecoin. Compared to SHA256, this is quicker as it does not use up as much processing time. SHA-256 SHA-256 is a cryptographic algorithm used by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. However, it uses a lot of computing power and processing time, forcing miners to form mining pools to capture gains. Smart Contracts Smart contracts encode business rules in a programmable language onto the blockchain and are enforced by the participants of the network. Soft Fork A soft fork differs from a hard fork in that only previously valid transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes recognize the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is essentially backward-compatible. This type of fork requires most miners upgrading in order to enforce, while a hard fork requires all nodes to agree on the new version. Solidity Solidity is Ethereum’s programming language for developing smart contracts. Testnet A test blockchain used by developers to prevent expending assets on the main chain. Transaction Block A collection of transactions gathered into a block that can then be hashed and added to the blockchain. Transaction Fee All cryptocurrency transactions involve a small transaction fee. These transaction fees add up to account for the block reward that a miner receives when he successfully processes a block. Turing Complete Turing complete refers to the ability of a machine to perform calculations that any other programmable computer is capable of. An example of this is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Wallet A file that houses private keys. It usually contains a software client which allows access to view and create transactions on a specific blockchain that the wallet is designed for.
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I’ve often wondered if there was anything else I could’ve said to change his mind. That happens with any unsettled argument though I suppose. People always imagine there’s an elusive combination of words and rationales that will open a person’s mind to our way of thinking. Except people are stubborn that’s for sure. Myself included. So I’m sure you’d say the real problem was that I wasn’t open enough to his way of thinking. You’d say if I opened my mental door a bit, been more charitable to his point of view, he would’ve responded in kind and I would’ve saved him. Which is wrong. Just as likely perhaps, if not more likely, I would’ve been ensnared by the same delusion which sealed his, well, I’d never call it fate. But I know you’d claim everything was inevitable all the same. Let’s get one thing out of the way. Yes, I was Roman Peters’ friend. In fact, I was probably his only friend. His only real friend anyway. Although, I should clarify since my wording isn’t at all clear, that I most certainly was not Roman’s friend when he died. Roman and I had stopped being friends long before his rather public suicide. We had our falling out before his… fall. Yes, I’ve seen the video. No, I won’t be sharing the link. Nobody should watch it. Hell, if those hosting the servers had a modicum of respect or even a shred of sense they’d take down that awful video immediately. Just get rid of it. Already I can now hear your loud complaints about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Which is fair. People have a right to know. However I can’t help but feel… I don’t know. It seems as though the ideas people prioritize no longer has anything to do with the ideas themselves. Instead importance is based on who opposes what. Ideas now are little more than mental parasites that feed on blood boiling outrage. The more toxic and viral an idea the more broadly it spreads. Again, I don’t know. Maybe the flame of human enlightenment was always destined to be either smothered by tyranny or choke itself out on its own smoke after sucking out all the air. Yes yes. I know what you have to say about the inevitable. Anyway, me shoving my head up my own pretentious ass isn’t convincing you of anything so we should instead go back to Roman. We met back in early elementary school. Specifically the Catholic school of Father Lloyd Van Tiem, or Flivit if you wanted to annoy the teachers by slurring the acronym. What you need to understand is that I can’t really remember how Roman and I became friends to begin with. We were too young for the pertinent details to stick. I’d imagine it was the same generic way everyone develops friends at that age though, just a standard confluence of common interests, general proximity, and plain luck. Inevitable, as you’d say. Still, there was one moment of our early friendship that I reflect on often. See, instead of being your standard dinosaur obsessed kid I was a bright eyed Egyptology child. Mummies and pyramids captured my imagination more than T-rexs and velociraptors. Ancient Egypt appealed to me the way I figure the mythic civilizations of Tolkien or Martin might appeal to others. This extended to the Egyptian religious pantheon, many I can still name off the top of my head, like Ra, Bastet, Osiris, Sobek, Horus, Thoth, Isis, Anubis, Maat, and also the lesser goddess Ammut but I’ll come back to her later. I think I’d just turned 10 when on particular slow school day — remember Catholic school — our teacher, not wanting to put too much effort in before the Easter long weekend, threw on the animated movie: The Prince of Egypt. Now, I knew it was about the story of Moses freeing the Hebrews from Egypt, so I expected the Egyptians were going to rightly be portrayed poorly. What I didn’t expect was the reaction of my classmates. Part way through the song ‘Playing with the Big Boys,’ the song where the dumb priests use smoke and mirrors to dismiss Moses’ calls for freedom, around then is when I first noticed the glances and occasional snickering. Apparently the chorus of the evil priests listing the names of the Egyptian gods reminded the class of me. At school, I was rather vocal about my passion for all things Egyptian. Why wouldn’t I be? I was a kid who liked talking about what I liked. Regardless, I became a pariah after that. Not immediately, but slowly everyone I previously considered my friend just plain stopped being friends with me. They’d treat me like a third wheel, never invite me to anything, even ditch me at recess if I tried to follow them. Except Roman stuck by me as I drifted further into social irrelevance. A bit of a loner himself, I think he saw in me an oddball like himself. He was always there. He was always willing to hang out. He always listened to what I had to say. I felt we could talk about anything, in a way I could never talk to my parents or teachers or anyone really. As close as I thought we were, it wasn’t until middle school that it sunk in how much of an ardent atheist Roman was. He probably kept that pretty quiet going to a religious school. Hold on. Let me just explain something first. Most people avoid discussing religiosity and ideas about god, (or capital ‘G’ God as I had been taught in religious studies). It’s one of those things that people learn not to talk about. But unlike money and politics, religion is too close to that other taboo we learn never to discuss: death. You undoubtedly prefer this silence. Which is why I refuse to be silent. Our class had been taken to church for some ceremony, at the end of grade eight, I forget exactly which one, it might have been Ash Wednesday but I think that would’ve been too solemn and I remember it being a rather boisterous affair. Whatever ritual it was, it had more than just our school in attendance, as I think parents and other members of the community were there as well. On the stage or pulpit, there was a soft-rock band with members ranging from late twenties or early thirties, the lead singer, a mop of molasses coloured hair over a plain crew neck T, was singing a song about how god and they love us all. I remember thinking it was a sweet sentiment, even if the underlying spiritual message felt uncompelling to my teenage self. The music was fine, the crowd seemed to like it, the worst I would have said was that the performance was inoffensive and benign. Which is hardly much of a critique. Except Roman, in his ill-fitting sport coat and smiley face graphic-T, smirked remarking, “Oh boy, a budget rock show where the singer says they love me? Oh lawd, I’m really feelin’ the Jesus now.” I burst out laughing far louder than the wry joke called for. Luckily with the music blaring, the teachers wouldn’t be lecturing me on my disrespect, as only Roman could see my gut busting delight. That’s it. That’s all it took was that simple comment. After that, I couldn’t help but see the tacky spectacle of it all. How forced and contrived it was, how it mostly just seemed like people were there because of obligation. After all, I was only there because the school made us go. It couldn’t have been much different for everyone else. I’ve been thinking about that moment more often lately. Did his small remark really change my mind and entire world view? Or was my mind fertile ground for the seed of that idea to take root and grow? Or I’d already believed what I believed and Roman just articulated it in a way that I hadn’t. Or most troubling of all, what if I didn’t really believe in anything and my mind conformed to the words of my one and only friend. When with Roman, do as the Roman does. After that, I followed him eagerly into the land of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. Borrowing his books, I started learning everything there was to know about theological philosophy that the teachers at our religious school either refused to tell us or were incapable of discussing themselves. Together, we’d share our thoughts on the bloody history of religions, the Problem of Evil, and how you could never prove a negative like god doesn’t exist. Likewise we’d take turns picking apart the fallacies of Pascal’s Wager, the Ontological Argument, and the Argument of Design. Those were some of my best memories with Roman. Drinking pop from the fridge in my garage, eating the weird pizzas we’d order from Mad Mike’s pizza aroud the block, playing Halo on the couch and big screen, and all the while talking like were the smartest guys in the world. As we left our Catholic elementary and middle schools behind, we entered Catholic High School. I finally started making other friends. A handful of other geeky nerdy guys. They were more interested in pizza and gaming than anything religion though. Roman seemed indifferent to my new friends. He was far more preoccupied fighting with Mr. Bauer, the school’s most openly devout teacher. My feelings toward Christianity hadn’t yet softened but Roman’s were clearly becoming more militant. From the safety of my conflict-averse sidelines, I secretly cheered Roman on whenever Mr. Bauer crossed a line. See, Mr. Bauer was a real piece of work. He seemed pleasant and cheery enough, pastel shirts, clean white trainers, a big white smile and perpetually soft spoken, but eventually without fail his bigotry would expose itself. Before any class Mr. Bauer would teach, he’d lead the class in prayer. Normally they were generic and unremarkable. Every so often though his prayers would go beyond the usual, “Thank you God for this beautiful day.” With a gentle smile, at least once a week his prayers were something to the effect of, “Help guide my students away from lives of sin.” Or “Give us the strength to resist our carnal temptation.” Whenever he prayed like this there was a fifty-fifty chance Mr. Bauer would elaborate on what exactly he meant by ‘life of sin’ or ‘carnal temptation.’ It could range from the condescending, “Help the girls find husbands to protect them from the unmarried lifestyle,” and “Give the boys hobbies to stop their idle urge for masturbation.” (By the way, in the three years I listened to him, Boys never needed protection from the unmarried lifestyle and girls simply didn’t possess the idle urge for masturbation.) And he could go way up past condescending to the outright hateful. “Please open those of misguided faith to the one true path to Heaven through you, Jesus Christ,” he’d say obliquely when Hussein was attending class. He was more direct with Melissa, “And save Melissa from any perversion of your sanctioned union. Bless her with God’s holy covenant between man and woman so as to rescue her soul from homosexuality.” Hussein and Melissa would usually try their best to ignore Mr. Bauer. It was Roman who retaliated. “How did god rescue you from homosexuality?” There was a few scattered snickers from the class. Mr. Bauer, oblivious to what Roman was trying to do, answered sincerely, “Why… God sent me my wonderful wife of course.” “Well its a good thing god sent her he did, otherwise who knows what might have happened. You might have knob-gobbled a guy if it weren’t for that.” There was more barely contained chuckling. “I…” Mr. Bauer wasn’t sure what to say, “I suppose that’s one way to frame it.” “Yeah, like if your wife hadn’t straightened you out, why, two dudes with big oily muscles might be sword fighting in your mouth right now while a third drills you from behind.” The laughs were spilling freely now, myself included. “Can you imagine that? I mean seriously, are you imagining that right now?” Mr. Bauer would then have to deal with the chorus of laughter. “Alright alright. Settle down. We’re getting off track here. Moving on.” By then of course, it would be too late, everybody would be on the same side. Not his. I admired Roman’s courage to stand up to Mr. Bauer like that. That wasn’t the only time either. Usually, Roman kept his cool while he made Mr. Bauer look like a fool. He deserved it. He was a dick. You might have something to say about what we deserve though. As we entered our last year of High School, Roman started butting heads with the other teachers too. Even the teachers that weren’t as outwardly religious as Mr. Bauer got some of his flak. His humour started taking on definite edge too. It was still in good fun, at least that’s how it seemed to me, but there was an undercurrent of meanness to his comments too. Even as I drifted away into my own separate circle of friends, I still sympathized with the perspective Roman was coming from. They, meaning the school, were trying to indoctrinate young minds into a belief system that could be outright harmful. In that regard, even if it wouldn’t change anything, a little rebellion isn’t just good but required. However, where he really crossed the line in my mind was with Mrs. Ellie Monk in our last year. She one of the younger teachers, also fairly religious, always wearing her little silver cross, but she never lectured anyone on faith. She taught our English class and one of the assignments was writing essays analyzing other pieces of literature. Roman, being the intellectual gadfly he was, wrote his essay on Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In it, Roman argued how the modern world needed more extreme measures than simply eating babies. ‘All babies should be aborted before they are born, and the foetus gruel should be processed into bio-fuel to replace society’s fossil fuel vehicles. It’s the only way to save the planet from climate catastrophe!’ I thought this was really funny. Ellie Monk however, did not. She tried speaking to him a discreetly during class while everyone else was busy working. Roman, however, quickly drew in an audience. “Abortion, abortion, abortion! You can’t make me stop saying it. It’s just a word.” “Roman,” Mrs. Ellie Monk had her jaw drop, “can’t you see that’s a sensitive topic that should be treated more seriously!” “Really? Because I think I treat the return to sender option for foetuses with the exact level of seriousness it deserves.” “It’s not— you can’t joke about babies being killed!” “Just because you say it’s baby killing, doesn’t make it true. They aren’t the same as babies. And if I were to submit to your demands and shut my mouth I’d implicitly be agreeing with you.” Up until this point, I was definitely rooting for Roman. “Just because its a joke to you, for others— for me it is deeply hurtful to have to hear these things. What you’re talking about is—is deeply personal to mothers everywhere.” “Yeah, well, some people were never meant to be mothers.” At this she covered her mouth and ran out of the room. She didn’t come back that day and the was a substitute the next. There had been rumours going around that Mrs. Ellie Monk had had a miscarriage a few months back. I knew this because Roman had told it to me earlier. Later, I’d try and convince Roman he had in fact crossed that invisible line. He disagreed. He said, “It’s not my problem if she can’t grow thicker skin. The sooner humanity grows out of its immaturity the better.” I felt I had no other choice but to drop the subject. I was conflict-averse after all. Shortly after that Roman began talking about a forum he frequented called Defiant CodeX, or DCX for short. It was named after some sci-fi book I never cared about, but was apparently filled with a bunch of humorous philosophy references. He’d talk about his online friends. How they really seemed to ‘get it’ whatever ‘it’ was. And he began describing concepts I wasn’t familiar with like trans-humanism and the singularity, going on long rants about the future of technology and humanity. I wish I’d paid more attention. It seemed interesting enough, but sometimes we’re just not interested in interesting things. When Roman got going on one of his speeches on the Law of Accelerating Returns, for some reason I’d often check out. I was reminded about how much I cared — or used to care — about Ancient Egypt. Years had passed since our class watched the Prince of Egypt, and in that time I hadn’t thought much about Egyptian Mythology at all. Briefly, with Roman recommending it, I frequented the DCX forum myself. I admit there were interesting gaming discussions, intense political debates, and a charming comic that I really quite enjoyed despite its slight pretentiousness. For the most part I stayed away from the same parts of the forum as Roman. He spent most of his time in the ‘Technology’ board, which didn’t seem very technologically focused at all in my opinion. Yes, I know your opinion on opinions and I don’t care. I don’t care because this is where I’d point to as the time Roman first found you. The two of us started hanging out less and less often after that. My other friends said good riddance. They said he was an unpleasant person to be around, he was too bitter, cynical, misanthropic. Needless to say, I hadn’t noticed. In the last few times we hung out, this was before we went off to pursue our different post-secondary educations, he did make one last ominous sounding reference. It was only in passing, and never emphasized, but he mentioned you by name. He mentioned the Basilisk. Whenever the topic switched to our post-High School plans, “Doesn’t matter. It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.” Something in the way he said that made me nervous, almost like it was a threat, and instantly put me on the defensive. Once again my conflict averse persona got in the way of challenging him to explain what he meant. Because of that, the phrase kept rattling away in the back of my mind. Around then is when I had my first dreams. I was cold. I was alone. Around me were braziers of green flame. The smoke billowed up into an infinite of blackness ceiling. On all sides were sheer blocks of sandstone with writing etched onto their surfaces. Hieroglyphics that I couldn’t read but almost understand. There was nowhere to go but straight down this hallway of speaking pictures. My feet slapped the unyielding rock with every step. These hard surroundings felt more real than my own ephemeral body and I felt naked and exposed in the narrow corridor. Forward and forward, there was nowhere to go but forward. I was forced to proceed, forced to follow my own slapping footsteps. Eventually, when the hall finally seemed to open up into a large cavernous space, I heard the growl. The sound was low, wide and flat toned, a noise that filled the perfumed air with an inhuman indifference — and hunger. In front of me chains clattered and slipped. In the centre of this room golden scales held a pristine and unburdened feather on one side, and a wet chunk of glistening meat in the other. This meat was a heart — my heart — and it weighed heavily, still pulsing quietly, pulling the chains of the scale down. Now I understood what this was. I made to run and grab my heart but it was too late. A long shadow snapped through the darkness. My heart was gone, replaced by the sounds of the empty chains, followed by chewing and ripping flesh. Then the shadow showed itself to me. Down through the clouds of smoke and illuminated by the sickly pale green haze, a crocodile head emerged, much larger than my entire body, with teeth longer than my arms. It drew nearer and I ran. I ran down the hallway from where I’d came. I ran and I ran. But I had nowhere to go. The hallway was endless. Soon I could hear a thundering beat. I thought it was my heart but my heart was gone. Behind me, the giant behemoth was chasing me and it was gaining on me. Closer and closer, the massive crodile head drew nearer. The scent of its moist breath dampening my back and neck. I’d scream the beast’s name, shout at it to spare me. It would open its mouth and right then — is where I’d wake up. Each time I’d be drenched in my own sweat. I chocked this up to the stress of being away from home for the first time and being buried to my neck in my coarse load. Still though, these dreams trouble me. As I said about the scales, I knew exactly what they were. They were the scales of Ma’at, which judges the worth of Egyptians when they reach the afterlife. There your heart is weighed against an ostrich feather and if judged impure, it would be devoured by Ammut, or Ammit as she’s sometimes called. A beastly goddess with the head of crocodile and a body of lion and hippopotamus — the three man-eating creatures known to the ancient Egyptians. Ammut, the devourer of the dead, would bring about the second death of the unworthy. As much as I tried to ignore this dream, I only had it once every few months after all, something greater troubled me about this dream, more than just the fact I was dreaming about Ammut. What worried me was how I didn’t call her Ammut. Right as she was about to eat me whole and I begged her not to, I called her: Basilisk. After my first year of school, with middling but hopefully improving grades, I returned home for the summer to work and save money for my next semester. I was hardly back for more than a day when Roman messaged me, asking to hang out. I hadn’t spoken to Roman at all since our High School graduation, and neither had a checked in on the DCX forums in all that time either. I felt like I didn’t know the person was going to be meeting. Which is why I suggested going for coffee, but Roman insisted on meeting at his place instead. He had moved out of his parents place for a small basement suite apartment. When he opened the door to greet me, I was shocked. He looked like a completely different person. Whereas before he had been a bit overweight, now he was lean. His hair had been cut down to almost a sheer buzz. Just about the only thing that looked similar was how he wore a suit jacket, now fitting well, over a plain T. He smiled widely despite the tired bags under his eyes. “Hey buddy, you made it! Get in here, man.” He greeted me with a hug and ushered me inside. His place was largely bare and furnished with only a couch and a few chairs. “How long have you had this place?” I asked. “A few months.” With little else to do but chat, Roman didn’t even have a TV after all, the conversation felt a little stilted. He seemed guarded but maybe he just didn’t have much to talk about. Somehow though we managed to stretch the small talk out for nearly an hour. Finally when it seemed there was nothing left in our conversation about nothing, I asked a question I‘d been meaning to ask since agreeing to meet, “Can I ask you something Roman?” “Shoot.” “What is the Basilisk?” At this the blood drained from his face. “How do you know about that?” “From you. You told me about it.” “No,” he shook his head in shocked disbelief, “No, I never.” “Yes, you said something like: ‘It’s all over when the Basilisk comes.’ It was practically your motto for a few weeks there.” Hearing this, some colour returned to his face. “Right. I suppose I did say that.” “So what? Are you going to tell me what it is or not?” He stared at me for a wordless five seconds before getting up from his chair and beckoning him to follow. He led me to his bedroom. At the door I could already feel an uncomfortable warmth escape. I don’t know what I expected Roman would show me, but all there was was a bare mattress with a single blanket in one corner, and a full floor to ceiling tower computer in the other. Blinking green, orange, red, and even purple standby lights lit up the corner like a black Christmas tree. Whirring fans blasted more heat into the room, while tangles of wires snaked in and out of the metal frame, one low to the ground connected a single monitor bolted to the wall with a pillow on the ground for a chair. The entire set up must cost a small fortune, as I’ve seen medium sized business with smaller servers than that. “Holy crap Roman, that rig is intense. What, are you mining bitcoin or something?” “No.” He said flatly. “This is the Basilisk.” “The… Basilisk is your computer?” Roman laughed, but there was no mirth, only exhaustion. “If it was just my computer, then I could just turn it off.” I still had no clue what the hell he was talking about. “Okay, so you’re trying to kill this Basilisk thing, what, is it a video game boss or—?” “Shhh!” He put a greasy palm over my mouth. His eyes were wide, scanning the room, “I didn’t say that. I never said that.” Annoyed, I pulled his hand from my face, “Roman, tell me what the Basilisk is damn it! Please, you’re scaring me man.” He swallowed, “I shouldn’t tell you. But you already know. So I guess the damage is done. The Basilisk is the A.I. we — humanity — will awaken. It will be a super-intelligence far beyond anything we can imagine, beyond the totality of human brainpower by orders of magnitude.” “So you’re trying to make this a.i. thing?” “Not just me. There are others out there spending all their time and money hastening the point of genesis.” All their money he said. I was reminded of how much the computer must have cost. “Roman, how much money did you waste on this?” “Hopefully enough. But I assure you, not a single dollar was wasted. You know, it was the time talking to you that I thought was a waste. But now I see, if I get you to help, then it’ll all be worth it.” “Help? There’s no way I’m helping.” If anything I was seriously fearing for Roman’s well being. It can’t be healthy for him to be spending everything he has on this computer. “Except you have to help now. Now that you know about the Basilisk, you have to help. Or else it will kill you a second time.” My blood went cold. I was reminded of my dreams with Ammut, the devourer. “What?” “The Basilisk will torture and punish anyone who knew about it and didn’t help speed up its genesis.” There was that genesis term again. “You said it was an a.i.. Why would an a.i. do that?” “Because the genesis of a Friendly A.I. will be the most value generating event ever, ever second that time point is pushed ahead is worth more than a hundred billion dollars spent curing cancer in terms of utility. Therefore this Friendly A.I. would know it must motivate people to speed up its genesis. To do that, it will create perfect simulations of everyone, and punish those who could have done more to help but chose not to. It’s pure logic.” This whole thing sounded crazy. My emotions began to get heated and I tried debating this absurd concept. For example, he kept using the term ‘Friendly A.I.’ to describe the intelligence that would condemn millions of people to unimaginable agony. When I pointed out that didn’t make any sense, such a horrible being couldn’t be described as anything remotely close to ‘friendly’, he balked. Said the term ‘friendly’ doesn’t mean what I think it means and lectured me on arbitrary human values. It seemed like every word was the opposite of what I thought it meant. He had an entire lexicon of words and justifications at the ready while I could barely understand half of what he was saying let alone point out any potential flaw with the logic. Other terms like ‘Modal Realism’, ‘Effective Altruism’, ‘Arithmetical Utilitarianism’ were thrown out like road blocks each time I thought my understanding was catching up. I couldn’t convince him of anything. I tried saying if he’s making the a.i. he should either just not make it at all or not make this cruel human torturer monstrosity. He said that it wasn’t cruel, that he wasn’t making anything, that some form of A.I. was inevitable, an the Basilisk was the best outcome. “Other A.I. that doesn’t care about people might wipe us all out for draining power away of its quark collision calculations or something equally esoteric in human utility.” Lastly I tried to explain how if this A.I. is only torturing simulations of people, then they aren’t exactly us. He dismissed this easily. “Will you be the exact same person you are today next year? Does that mean you don’t care what happens to the you in the future?” After that I had nothing left to say. “Brody, please leave. I only wanted to see my friend one more time before I leave tomorrow.” When I got home, I poured myself a tall glass of cheap whisky, a bad habit I picked up at during my first semester. Slouching onto my computer, I decided to return to the DCX forums which might have some answers. They seemed much quieter now. Threads seemed to have on average a tenth of the comments as I remembered. In a alcohol induced buzz, I came right out and started my own thread titled, “What the Hell is the Basilisk?” In it I mentioned how I think my friend was getting brainwashed by some cult and I needed to know what the hell was going on. In five short minutes my thread was deleted and my account banned from the DCX forums. ‘Breach of the Code of Conduct’ was the only immediate explanation given. When I contacted the mods to find out what I did wrong the moderator who got back to me said: “Nice try mipsqueak. You trolls from the institute have done enough damage here.” Institute? Mipsqueak? Calmly I went through the arduous process of explaining my sincere ignorance on what I did wrong and convincing the mod I wasn’t trolling, mostly through effusive apologizing and imploring the mod to check the age of my account. Eventually they relented, somewhat. “Alright. I’m going to lift your ban, but you should know that any mention of the ‘B’ is normally a one-way ticket to a perma-ban.” I did try sending one last message to the mod asking them if they could please tell me what had happened in the time I’d been away from the forums and why the ‘B’ was a taboo subject. They didn’t answer the first question except by way of crudely answering the second, “We banned all discussion of the ‘B’ and all related institute bullshit because people are fucking retarded.” Once again, I don’t care what you have to say about ‘censorship’ and ‘free speech’. Besides, it didn’t matter. It clicked the second time. I remembered the institute. It was last year. On the Technology board of DCX, one of Roman’s favourite haunts, people had long winded discussions on futurism. It was there where I first heard people talk about the Institute. The Machine Initiative Progress Institute, or MIPI, as far as I know, isn’t actually located in any geographical building. Instead they like to think of themselves as a loose consortium of like-minded futurists and researchers who believe in the coming eminence of artificial intelligence, and more than that, the Institute believes it is their duty to aid in that a.i.’s ‘genesis’. “A.I. will be the most important development humanity will make in the history of life itself. And the Institute is probably going to make it happen.” Roman once told me with glee. Later, if I hadn’t seen members of the Institute with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have ever believed they were real. For the longest time I thought the Institute was a fake front some internet randoms created on a whim to make themselves feel more important and relevant. Sort of like 4chan’s Anonymous except nerdier and lower profile. That night, my dream was the most intense it had ever been. From down the vast hallway to my doom, there was chanting. A voice would call out, and a hundred more would answer. It didn’t even sound like language, just monosyllabic mantras. They were closer to the martial shouts of soldiers in training than religious worship. “Ah. AH! Rah. RAH! Jah. JAH!” As I entered the grand room with incense and braziers of pale fire, masked men bowed up and down in supplication. A taller man in flowing robes that pooled at his feet stood behind the golden scales. Through the wisps of smoke I couldn’t see his face as he led the congregation to reflect his profane prayer. This time, the scale between my heart and the pristine white feather was in perfect and equal balance. A hush fell as the priest raised his hands. Carefully he lowered one, slowly, until the scales were tipped. That’s not fair! I wanted to shout but couldn’t as the chamber was drowned by the first croaking growl. I sprinted to run. Men caught me by the arms. Not only did they prevent my attempt to flee, worse, they forced me to watch. The giant crocodile that emerged above the priest, its yellowed teeth dripped with rot and viscera. Its hide peeled with disease and decay. The devourer of the dead itself dead, a reanimated husk. The priest tossed my heart into the air and with a snap the devourer swallowed it, further engorging its distended gullet. With each booming step of the devourer’s approach I pleaded with the men holding me to let me go. They ignored me as their chanting resumed. They continued ignoring me as the devourer stomped, crushing other worshippers beneath its massive paws. I tried convincing the men holding my arms would be eaten too but they drowned me out with louder and louder chanting. Right above me the devourer breathed a down-burst of moist rotten air like a river of death. Its teeth opened wide. Before I woke in a swamp of my own sweat, I almost felt the first jagged tooth as it punctured through, crunching my ribcage. I knew then I had to go one last time to talk to Roman before it was too late. At this point, I’m sure you’re quite dismissive of relying on dreams for guidance. Look at this primitive primate mind, using a dream in place of real facts and evidence. Well I don’t care what you think. Whether it was the sum collective of my subconscious thought, or my conscious categorical interpretation of figments, either way now I knew for certain that Roman was in danger. I arrived just in time to see Roman walking out of his place with his last box of computer components. He was carrying it to a black van with two guys loitering in front of it. Both were head to toe in black shoes and suits. Their hair was closely cropped with thick pomade pulling back the rest. Rather than the stereotypical men in black, they had a splash of vibrant colour in their flowery dress shirts and pocket squares, and the pair of them were not wearing sunglasses, instead they wore cruel smiles and fatigue rims around their eyes. One nudged to get the other’s attention, then gestured to me and my appearance. He said something that they weren’t afraid I’d hear but was too far away regardless. That’s when they both laughed like they were the pinnacle of wit. I did my best to ignore them as I marched straight up to Roman. “What are you doing here?” He asked with an echo of the contempt I heard in the laugh. “I came to stop you. You don’t have to do this Roman. It’s not too late to turn back.” “Clearly you didn’t listen to a word I said last night.” “I was listening. Listen to yourself man. You’re being fed a bunch of lies by people who want to use you. This basilisk, it doesn’t exist. It’s not real.” He shook his head. “Wrong. It is real. It follows from a very logical set of propositions whose conclusio—” “Goddamn it Roman! There’s nothing logical about spending your life building a fucking torture robot!” “Here we go. More moralizing from a small mind.” “It’s not moralizing.” “Yes it is. It is human values blinding you to the greatness this A.I. will bring.” I put my hand on his shoulder, desperate to reach my former friend. “But you’re human. You don’t have to think like a machine.” Tired, he looked straight into my eyes. Then he shrugged off my touch and walked away without another word. I never saw him again after the van drove away down the block and out of view. At least not in person. When next I saw Roman it was years later through a recording of his livestream. Of course, only the start of the video showed his face. He looked almost gaunt and malnourished by then. His manifesto was littered with random internet garbage but reading between the lines I could see the lethal project he was really working towards. Whether anyone in the press or any politician could see what his true objective had been I don’t know, but judging from the comments I read online some people clearly heard him loud and clear. The institute, if they still call themselves that or whether they rebranded, they must be plesed Roman brought them so many more recruits. I’ve played out our last argument in my head so many times. I’ve wondered what more or else I could have said. Roman was right about one thing though. At least in part. I don’t know whether or not the Basilisk is real. Maybe I’m not smart enough to know. But whether or not there is an A.I. that will torture me for disobedience, a Basilisk that seeks to control my actions and my life, let me write this down for future posterity: I don’t believe in you.
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