rich1.0npub1tfk373zg9dnmtvxnpnq7s2dkdgj37rwfj3yrwld7830qltmv8qps8rfq0nhttps://nostr.ae/npub1tfk373zg9dnmtvxnpnq7s2dkdgj37rwfj3yrwld7830qltmv8qps8rfq0nnjumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2014-07-04 📝 Original message:On Friday, July 04, 2014 8:21:42 PM Jorge Timón wrote: > On 7/4/14, kjj <bitcoin-devel at jerviss.org> wrote: > > I suspect that there exist no algorithms which cannot be done better in > > an application-specific device than in a general purpose computer. And > > if there is such a thing, then it must necessarily perform best on one > > specific platform, making that platform the de facto application > > specific device. > > > > I'm not sure how one would go about proving or disproving that, but it > > seems very likely to be true. > > I assumed this was obvious and self-evident for anyone who knows what > a Turing machine is, but judging from the number of smart people > wasting their time on the pursue of the "anti-ASIC" myth (also known > as pow wankery) it seems I was wrong. > Anything you can do with software you can do with hardware and > viceversa (you can even do it with ropes and fire in Minecraft!!) > Does this really need any proof? > I think it's the hard-pow cultists who have to provide a counterexample. Really, if people want to pursue a goal anything like this, they should be looking for "ASIC already widely owned" as the property rather than "anti- ASIC". Thus, a sufficiently memory-hard PoW would really be "RAM is the ASIC". Whether it's possible to make this or not, is another question. And then we get back to "is is really a desirable property to have people capable of mining who have not given any indication of interest?"