Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Recent related threads:

Thoughts on a “HDD shortage” from an industry insider - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27008295 - May 2021 (106 comments)

SSD makers start warning that mining products like ChiaCoin will void warranty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 - May 2021 (381 comments)

Chia surpasses 1 exabyte of hard drive space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26975734 - April 2021 (151 comments)

New Chia coin crypto with Proof of Space may create shortage of storage device - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26879278 - April 2021 (19 comments)

Chia Blockchain mainnet successfully launched today at 14:00 UTC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26515025 - March 2021 (14 comments)

View on HN

I am... Suspicious of all the chia articles popping up on HN. I have not seen the same kind of buzz happening in other crypto spaces about it. And I am also suspicious about the claims that chia is the one that is such a threat to data storage supply, considering there are other crypto currencies with a similar approach.

Overall, I am inclined to say that this is a submarine and HN is falling for it.

Regardless, more to the point of the article, the argument and moral panic rings hollow. Chia just incentives other people to store data for people who want to store data. The place, overhead and mechanism of data retrieval is different, but, still, someone wants to store the data there and they pay for it. So how then is this more of a threat than cloud providers for example?

Later Edit: I mistook Chia as having a similar approach as Filecoin, but, on closer inspection, it seems that they do not store data people want they just store data to prove it's stored and use that to distribute mining rewards. So I was wrong at this end. Still, I maintain my opinion this is a submarine.

> I have not seen the same kind of buzz happening in other crypto spaces about it

If all the usual crypto charlatans aren't "to the moon"-ing it, that is a strong indicator of value for me.

The reason it is getting play on HN and other tech focused outlets is because it is an interesting new project from the designer of BitTorrent, who clearly knows a thing about designing protocols.

> Chia just incentives other people to store data for people who want to store data.

This is untrue, Chia requires wasting storage space to store pointless garbage.

I learned about Chia last week by googling "hard drive shortage" to figure out why suddenly hard drives prices are spiking where I live.

Definitely not a submarine.

Could you or the parent commenter define "submarine" in this context? I searched and didn't find anything relevant.

It means an advertisement disguised as a news article.

It's a reference to a pg essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

The part introducing the term is at the beginning:

"Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms."

Hard to say, really. It could be organic, but then, it is in the interest of Chia to spread the stories about "hard drive shortage" - like all crypto schemes, their best user base are people who will see an article about cryptocurrency causing a social-wide issue, and read it as an opportunity. The people who see a disaster and their first thought is about how to profit off it.

I'm a bit worried it's a self fulfilling prophecy:

"People are buying hard drives to farm despite price increases, it must be profitable, maybe I should buy one too..."

> Chia just incentives other people to store data for people who want to store data.

I think you are confusing Chia with Sia

You are correct and my later edit was added to address this.

Not sure what is the proper etiquette if I realize my initial statement was false is some way, add a new paragraph addressing the issue or just edit the original post to reflect updated stance?

New paragraph could add confusion

Editing the initial post might make it seem like I'm trying to look smarter than I actually am.

Your comment broke the site guidelines, which ask you not to post insinuations of astroturfing, shilling, etc., without evidence. Multiple articles showing up about a topic isn't evidence of abuse; it's perfectly normal. Any slightly unusual angle like the hard-drive thing is more than enough to explain a small flurry of articles.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We have that rule because it's extremely easy to fall into imagining this sort of thing based purely on a few data points one dislikes. In the absence of evidence, that's likely what's happening. Moreover, the submission histories of most of the accounts that posted those threads is evidence against what you said, and that information is public and trivial to check.

Apologies dang, you are right. Won't do this again. I really appreciate the work you're doing here.

So in other words, there's a campaign (centralized or not) to pump Chia on HN? :(

this incredibly viral "chia will cause a shortage of hard drives" meme (true or not) is a huge gift wrapped win for the coin's promoters.

every impression of this meme that results in someone's decision to avoid chia (which, had they never heard of the coin in the first place, would have been the outcome anyway) will be offset by a half dozen others who will spot a quick 10x return opportunity for themselves, even if they recognize that the long term result is a net negative for everyone else.

it's Streisand Effect rocket fuel.

Bingo. The mods are asleep at the wheel on this one.

I've also seen it in various "technology" subreddits.

I'm suspicious that HDD and SSDs manufactures and/or merchants have been hyping it after getting jealous with how much money GPUs have been raking in.

It's not that many articles, and they're not all favorable. Please don't break the site guidelines like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> they're not all favorable

That doesn't matter. It still generates buzz. People will pour resources into a crypto-currency even when it's established up front as a joke.

> don't break the site guidelines like this.

I take it the rule was triggered by the word "campaign":

>> So in other words, there's a campaign (centralized or not) to pump Chia on HN? :(

I pretty clearly indicated that I don't think it's necessarily a coordinated thing. It's more of a phenomenon than a "brigade" or "astroturfing", but what should we call it? What should I say? How should I feel about a disturbing trend that you've pointed out?

Furthermore, you've already shared your data, so there's no reason for me to email you about it per the guidelines. I appreciate the vigilance and hard work, but I think we can agree you're mistaken this time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com