It's also not simply a matter of agreeing on what tasks to use. The task has to be computationally difficult to perform, but computationally trivial to verify. It must also be verifiable with only the context of the blockchain (no "oracle" that can make claims about real-world events).
Primecoin exist(ed?) and used the search for Mersenne prime numbers as its proof-of-work. That was 13 years ago and is still the only example I know of "proof-of-useful-work", and it would not be difficult to find sour voices challenging its usefulness.
The disappointing truth is that we simply don't know. Satoshi never explained it. For SHA-2 it can be used as a mitigation against length-extension attacks¹, and this seems like the most likely explanation, but it's just speculation.
It's a common misunderstanding that mining just gets harder and harder as time goes by and more coins are minted. It's often misreported that way. But in fact, the difficulty is dynamic and adjusts itself to keep minting at the predetermined rate regardless of the number of participants. Mining has gotten harder on long timelines, but only because more computing power has been added.
Backed stablecoins aren't some anarchistic anti-government thing; they are highly regulated and will lose access to their banking if they don't follow the rules – rules which require them to freeze coins in cases of crime.
If you want to show a middle finger to government there are cryptocurrencies for that, but USD stablecoins with centralized backing is not it.
Back when Raspberry Pi 4 came out in 2019, the 4GB variant cost $55. Fast forward seven years and the same hardware with slightly less memory costs $83.75.
There was a time when computers just got faster and better so fast that you could barely get one set up at home before it was obsolete.
Just watching it now (and what a house it is). There's a TV in almost every room, and Fox News is on each of them. He says: "Yes, it is the same station on every television, because that's how the system is designed. It's designed so it'll play the same station all over the house. It happens to be Fox News, but I do flip around. It's not nailed on Fox News, in case you're wondering."
mc user for decades here. I spent a long time teaching myself yazi and configuring it just to my liking, only to realize I don't really use a file manager that much anymore. It's hard to compete with shells for efficiency in most scenarios.
I wish I could buy it, but I'm in the unfortunate situation of being in Norway, instead of almost any other European country. Will you ever ship here? ;-(
It can be found on each of these URLs:
https://keys.openpgp.org/vks/v1/by-fingerprint/40455A814AA7D22B2636A03784EA82541F47C4A7
* https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?search=40455A814AA7D22B2636A03784EA82541F47C4A7&fingerprint=on&op=index
https://github.com/haakonn.gpg (on my GitHub account)
https://www.reddit.com/r/KeybaseProofs/comments/1d68a9w/my_keybase_proof_reddithaakon_keybasehaakon/ (on my Reddit account)