Doc Rock is one of my fav panelists, always fun to have him on.
Re: bitcoin miner profitability - am I mistaken that it would be catastrophic for the blockchain if a sufficient number of miners shut down operations due to costs? From what I understand, miners are needed to verify transactions among other things. If there’s a drop in the number of miners, tx times will shoot way up.
My biggest worry about Artemis was whether Iran or one of their allies launched a missile at either the rock as it was leaving, or the capsule as it was returning. And I hated that feeling because it took me out of the joy and wonder of the event and instead had me worried about an act of war.
In theory, in the short term, yes, but in the long term, the difficulty would reduce to reflect the number of participants, which should entice more participants because the [granted small at this point] rewards would be easier to earn. Also, it could drive up the cost of transactions as people offer more for that service to entice anyone to take on their transaction. But if everyone abandoned processing then it would definitely have an impact and I guess it could get to the point of collapse where people just abandoned all participation and called it dead.
The EU has been talking for months about reducing its reliance on Big Tech. Germany announced a few weeks back that they are switching away from Microsoft Office, all official documentation now has to be in Open Document Format, going forward, meaning all submissions from outside have to be ODF as well.
Munich did use Linux for a while, but a new administration took over the city council and forced the re-introduction of Microsoft, not for technical reasons, but because of lobbying. Saying that Linux failed in Munich is like saying Obama Care failed in the USA - it wasn’t given a chance, a new administration had different ideas and scrapped it.