Petition to ban bitcoins - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 10:36:52 am
content: I just read a news article that even TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) is going to invest in hardware to mine bitcoins. What worries me is that it takes an enormous amount of energy to mine bitcoins. IMHO people should stop mining bitcoins for this reason.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 11:16:03 am
content: Unsurprisingly, the article quotes various figures to try and evoke a response, without putting them in any kind of context. It's a depressingly common method used by the 'something-must-be-done' brigade and those who pander to them. The use of the word "disaster" in the headline is a dead give-away, and the completely irrelevant photo of a gold mine only serves to undermine the credibility of the article and its author even further.As an industry, what is the proportionate cost of energy used per unit of revenue created, and how does this compare with other energy-intensive industries?How does the total size of the bitcoin mining industry compare to other industries?Does it even appear on the top 100 industrial consumers of electricity? The top 1000?In countries where this industry exists, what proportion of the country's total electricity generation does it use? How does this compare to, say, the power lost by phone chargers being left on?

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 12:21:30 pm
content: Shit article for ipocondriac readers

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 12:41:44 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on August 05, 2013, 11:16:03 amIts just one of the many articles you'll find using Google. I just randomly picked one of the first 3 links.QuotePerhaps. But other industries produce something real instead of trying to inflate a big soap bubble. The people behind bitcoin should have thought about the consequences of their system. Part of my EE study was about professional ethics.

author: Dago
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:03:15 pm
content: This falls in to the same category as the news where they calculate and announce that you can save over 9000 jiggawatthours when you remove phone chargers from the socket when you're not using them. But then they fail to mention that it's a tiny miniscule fraction of the energy used by lets say street lamps or even toasters (who needs toasters, you can eat your bread without toasting it, right!?). It probably used more energy to create and view the news article than they would save by removing the chargers from the wall...

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:25:43 pm
content: Yes, but their contention is that mining bitcoins is fundamentally wasteful. It isn't. Bitcoin mining is rhe accounting and redundancy checks and stuff for transactions. Its hell of a lot more efficient than it is now for sure.

author: metalphreak
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:26:21 pm
content: TSMC are already making ASIC chips for a number of companies already aren't they? I've seen a few different products now with proper ASIC hardware (and not FPGA).On the topic of wasting energy, what magical energy free hardware do you think all the current banking systems work on? You shouldn't play video games or use a computer for fun, because it's using energy that's destroying the environment... (at least bitcoins serve a purpose)

author: lgbeno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:28:28 pm
content: I think you could argue the same thing about any currency, just some bubbles are fortified much more than others.Investment bankers burn megawatts of energy doing "low latency trading" for the same reason with no "real" effect on the world.Bitcoins are an interesting 21st century quark. With the Internet and cheap computers, the infrastructure is now in place for a non-gov backed currency. If adopted (which I think is a long road) it could change things and further flatten the world.Bitcoins will progress the speed & sopistication of our encryption technology by leaps because there is a financial incentive to do so. Not quite sure if that is a good or bad thing come to think of it... Either way it is forward progress IMO.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

author: Balaur
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:35:42 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2013, 10:36:52 amAny sources for this very bold affirmation?Some company (Avalon) may manufacture its chips at TSMC (as49% of the industry it's doingbut that doesn't mean that TSMC themselves will invest in bitcoins.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 01:51:52 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2013, 12:41:44 pmWhat happens if you spend a while longer sorting through the results to try and pick out credible reports with meaningful, quantitative figures and context in them? Are there any? And if there are, do they tend to lead the reader towards the same conclusion as the alarmist rubbish?QuoteSince when has producing a tangible product ever been a requirement for a legitimate industry?Does the energy usage involved in, say, hosting and viewing videos on YouTube bother you as much? Why?Would you feel differently if a Bitcoin were a real, shiny object that took the same amount of energy to dig out of the ground?Do you object to the physical mining of precious stones that have no practical utility over and above the fact that they look nice and people will therefore pay good money for them?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 02:18:10 pm
content: If you can go down that road you might as well kill yourself because ultimately life is meaningless...Big companies and environmentalists have been making much stance about more efficient servers, bandwidth conserving protocols and less computational intensive tasks. Some companies even move their data warehouses to cooler areas to reduce the amount of energy required for cooling. In that context its quite bad to come up with a system which needs a lot of computational power.Read about Google's efforts:http://www.google.com/green/efficiency/datacenters/

author: lgbeno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 02:45:51 pm
content: Actually bitcoins are self regulating in power consumption because miners won't spend more money on energy than the bitcoins are worth. Therefore a huge metric is simply how many hashes per watt can your mining rig do.This is why TSMC is important, the mining ASICs need to get into deep sub-micro in order to become more efficient. Could also explain why TSMC is "investing," could just mean that they are fabing ASICs for less margin and therefore asking for equity in a bitcoin ASIC company.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 03:20:17 pm
content: The fact that electricity costs money means that bitcoin miners will also seek to reduce the power consumption of their mining systems. The bitcoiners are trying just as hard to reduce their power consumption as Google is, and both for the same reason: money.

author: dfmischler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 03:31:50 pm
content: My question is, who are you planning to petition? The bitcoin people? Your own national government? The UN? The pope?

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 05:04:50 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2013, 02:18:10 pmWhich road? All I've done - consciously, at least - is try to ascertainquantitativelywhether this is an issue of genuine significance, or something so vanishingly trivial that it's not even worth thinking about. We, as technically competent people with a reasonable grasp of science and mathematics, have a responsibility to ask these questions. If we don't, then nobody else will.You mentioned professional ethics earlier. Do you think it is ethical to publish stories which mislead the public in order to sell news coverage?What would the likely long-term consequences be of spreading "information" like this?QuoteSure. Energy is expensive, and being seen to do something environmentally friendly is good for business.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 05:24:25 pm
content: Bitcoins are based on something - production. Actually, they are one of the only (maybe THE only) currency that is tethered to something of fundamental value. One might argue that the computations being done are not inherently beneficial to mankind and therefore have no value... but couldn't the same be said for currency exchanges who are much larger than simple liquidity demands they be? What about companies that manufacture "positive ion" bracelets and that crap? Or companies that make unhealthy food?At the end of the day, capitalism wins. Bitcoins have a finite quantity and their value is essentially based on the free market. It's already a negative ROI proposition to mine bitcoins on your home PC... but with custom ASIC's and very low cost of energy? It's probably still viable.And just as people manufacturing bullshit magnetic bracelets keeps people employed, even though the end result is worthless, even if one thinks Bitcoins are inherently worthless, it's still keeping people in jobs (like the people making the ASICs and the hardware people are using to mine the bitcoins).

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 05:35:32 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2013, 12:41:44 pm- are you soldering lead-free ?- do you follow RoHs and WEEE for everything you do ?- when you write code, are you making sure not a single instruction cycle is being wasted ?- are you sure the parts you use don't contain any minerals coming from conflict zones ?- do you get boards in china where people work for peanuts and they dump the spent etchant fluid down the drain ?how far do you want to go ?as far as 'life being meaningless' : it is only meaningful to one self. the rest may all just be a figment of your imagination.the question is how far do you want to go , and when do you hit the point that further efforts are meaningless. ( law of diminishing returns)

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 06:23:50 pm
content: can you eat harddrive?

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 06:24:20 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on August 05, 2013, 05:24:25 pmBreaking windows also provides jobs to people.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 07:17:55 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on August 05, 2013, 05:24:25 pmNot really. Capitalism is ultimately self destructive. Why do you think there are so many rules about food quality, car emissions, safe working conditions, etc, etc? I suggest you watch this documentary on how shockingly unethical people, society and companies can be:

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 07:19:56 pm
content: Quote from: alm on August 05, 2013, 06:24:20 pmI know that parable well, and it's not applicable to Bitcoins. The parable is about the net effect of destruction on economics being negative. Bitcoin mining is not a destructive endeavor. It may not be as productive as some folks would like, but it does create something. That is the inherent value of bitcoins, the solving of the underlying mathematically complex equations. That creates jobs, creates value and supports ancillary businesses (like the companies making/selling video card based systems for bitcoin mining. Those are jobs that would otherwise not exist).

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2013, 07:24:19 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 05, 2013, 07:17:55 pmWe don't have true capitalism. If we did, the world economy would be a smoldering heap right now because the banks would have been allowed to fail. We have restricted capitalism, and some of those restrictions are the things you mention. But that doesn't mean capitalism doesn't work anymore than rules of ethics on physicians mean that medicine doesn't work. Capitalism is responsible for the high standard of living we all enjoy and it's a great thing.Mining for bitcoins is a capitalist endeavor - one of the great ones, actually, because it's open to anyone and anyone can create direct value themselves without an intermediary like production or a salary. There are companies making hardware specifically for bitcoins - and those jobs would otherwise not exist. That is a great thing.

author: MacAttak
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 03:39:19 am
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on August 05, 2013, 05:24:25 pmIt's not a negative ROI yet, only for those using power-hungry GPU miners. Custom ASIC's are already here in full force, and they dominate the current hashing pools. There are several USB-powered miners available now which use a fraction of the power of a high-end GPU card but deliver higher hash rates.One of those USB-powered miners will mine enough to pay for itself in something like 6 months or so (assuming you don't overpay for it).And there are standalone products in the $1,000 to $2,000 range that are 10 times more efficient than the USB miners. These repay their investment in a matter of around 6 to 8 weeks.edit: This table is quite thorough and up-to-date:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 04:45:25 am
content: Quote from: MacAttak on August 06, 2013, 03:39:19 amDid you see that I was saying "on your home PC" though? I agree that the ROI can be there if you use the right hardware, but I don't think it's there for the average Joe using their home PC. The fastest GPU setups are about 3Mhash/Joule whereas most of the ASIC setups are over 100. MHash/$ is another one - the ASIC's are so far out in front I don't think there is any ROI on doing it on your home PC.Could be wrong though, I haven't been keeping that up to date with the latest.

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 04:49:22 am
content: With the rate that the difficulty index is moving up now - even the best ASIC (400 GH/s) miners are outdated in about 8 months with negative ROI.From March 2013 to August 2013 - difficulty index has gone from about 3200 - to 37000 - and with all the new ASIC miners hitting "miners" within the next 2-5 months - I don't see the trend stopping. Since the system is capped with 1 block pr. 10 minutes - you wont get anywhere with 1 TH/s miner in 6 months. So all the extra ASIC's are just used to find the same 1 block / 10 minute.But maybe we can use the mining hardware for ANTI-PRISM key-gen when they become obsolete.Just go in herehttp://mining.thegenesisblock.com/- and select the "mining hardware" and potential delivery date - and you will see how quickly your ROI is blasted out of the water. I think Bitcoin mining is dead unless the currency starts increasing massively in value - in which case it might be a better investment just to purchase Bitcoins outright.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 08:48:29 am
content: Quote from: Dago on August 05, 2013, 01:03:15 pmHahaha, people complaining about leaving the lights on in a room for 10 mins when you walk out... same people who leave the iron on for 15 mins accidentally, or set the kettle to boil and forget about it and come back an hour later and boil it again.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 09:53:37 am
content: Nothing like a good petition signing to demonstrate what idiots some people are.For instance, the people willing to sign a petition to grant Obama immunity for any crimes.http://patriotaction.net/video/obama-supporters-petition-to-grant-him-immunity-for-all-crimes-heI take it the 'anti-bitcoin petition' means some PR firm has been hired to demonize the dangerous idea of a virtual currency free of government and private banking extortion. After all if they simply tried to ban it, it would just get more popular.I bet the same people are trying very hard to think of some way to claim bitcoins are a threat to children.Oh wait, they already did.http://www.dailydot.com/news/eric-marques-tor-freedom-hosting-child-porn-arrest/An in-depth guide to Freedom hosting, the engine of the Dark Net.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6158783One month after starting up an independent virtual bank, Freedom Hosting gets destroyed for 'child porn'. What a coincidence.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 10:11:08 am
content: Bitcoin to me is a really interesting currency system; I'm not sure why you'd want to petition to ban it. I believe I read somewhere that if the mining returns drop to a point where it's not profitable, then the "foundation" could tweak the system to award a larger transaction fee to the miners to make it worth it.

author: MacAttak
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 07:18:39 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on August 06, 2013, 04:45:25 amUmm, right. I'm talking about apples and you're talking about apples.CPU mining is absurdly inefficient. GPU mining has excessive power usage. I wasn't talking about people running mining rigs with those.ASICs are a part of the average "home PC" mining rig configuration now. There are a ton of Block Erupters and Jalapenos out there, plus a recent boom in Avalon-based rigs. These are mostly people who just run a few of them attached to their PC. Like this:Unless you invest a lot of money into it (thousands of dollars), mining is just a curiosity. Always has been. For now it is still something that an average person can do, if for no reason other than to learn about it. It is barely profitable using small Block Erupters like in the photo above, but it is still above the red line. The hardware does resell for a decent price - it doesn't depreciate faster than the value goes down - and bitcoin in general has enjoyed some pretty intense value gains lately.So for what I paid for those four miners and the electricity cost (very small for ASICs), plus what I've mined (and what they sell for on ebay right now), it is a slightly profitable activity for now (VERY slightly). I'll probably get bored of it and sell the miners before it becomes a net loss.And these are the lowest efficiency ASIC devices on the market. The others are much better MHash/$.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2013, 08:29:45 pm
content: Quote from: MacAttak on August 06, 2013, 07:18:39 pmNot what I'd call a home PC... but I see what you're saying. I was talking about people mining on the computers they are also using for other tasks. The ROI is already negative for that... and just barely there for other hardware (that you need to pay for the power cost for). I think there are a lot of folks mining who aren't paying for the power (some not paying for the hardware either). It's hard to compete with free.

author: MacAttak
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 07, 2013, 12:47:54 am
content: I'm not sure why it is disqualified as a "home PC". That photo is just a USB hub (that I already had) plugged into my macbook that I use for nearly everything, including 8-12 hours per day of work. MacMiner just runs in a window, quietly feeding work to the dongles. Zero impact on the rest of the system. Negligible CPU activity and very low network utilization.That's how an increasingly large swath of people are running miners (some with more USB hubs than others). These things are essentially plug-and-play devices with only a simple driver that needs to be installed.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2013, 01:29:53 am
content: Quote from: jucole on August 06, 2013, 10:11:08 amI'm not against virtual currency or whatever and I'm not endulging myself into conspiracy theories either. My beef is that we really don't need somethingnewin this world which wastes a lot of energy while everybody is (forced to) conserving energy. You can't argue against that or claim its insignificant. The people behind bitcoin could have developed different methods for a gradual release of bitcoins.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 07, 2013, 02:00:04 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 07, 2013, 01:29:53 amNot really... the whole point is that bitcoin is about production. Every other fiat currency is about something else, except gold which is more about the amount that exists in total, the difficulty in extracting it, and of course supply/demand.That is what makes Bitcoin so good and so different. It's not just based on some business or government that backs it but rather on actual production. Work had to be performed for each bitcoin in existence.

author: MacAttak
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 07, 2013, 03:54:47 am
content: It does have one significant achilles heel though - bitcoin's foundation is cryptography technology. Which is derived from a science that we are still learning, still very much in its infancy really. And highly reliant upon both hardware assumptions and vulnerability assumptions. One really smart kid could figure out a small flaw in the SHA-2 hashing algorithms and overnight the "currency" would be effectively without value because the block chain would no longer be a trustworthy system of record. This has happened in the past to other algorithms - there is no reason to believe it won't happen eventually to the SHA-2 family.This is not a weakness of traditional currencies except in the far less likely occurrence of a full financial system collapse.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 07, 2013, 04:24:39 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 07, 2013, 01:29:53 amPardon? In the field of currency & banking we most certainly DO need something new. To say we don't merely demonstrates that you somehow haven't noticed the serious structural/political flaws in the current global financial system, which everyone who pays attention is well aware of. Search terms: fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, private banking cartels, currency creation via loans, rigged gold & silver markets, US Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation, Creature from Jekyl Island... just for starters.QuoteYou absolutely haven't demonstrated that the total energy used for bitcoin mining is significant in any way. Especially relative to other large scale computing systems such as google searching, cloud computing, HF trading, and even the poor design of standard html/CSS/script which places much of the web page display calculation burden on Clients (every time), rather than the Servers (once.)QuoteYes we can.QuoteYou need to propose at least one viable alternative before you can claim that. I bet you can't.Btw, the only 'indulgence' related to conspiracy theories, is to pretend that the world is run on an 'open' model, and that the wealthy and powerful never do things in secret among themselves that you wouldn't like if you knew about it.This is an extremely naive, even stupid assumption. Edward Snowden would sneer at you, and so would Michael Hastings - if he were still alive.

author: Slobodan
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 08:44:12 am
content: Ban BitCoin?Slaves will be slaves...

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 09:01:26 am
content: Guys why we don't let this topic die?Is so stupid

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 11:23:46 am
content: I guess I'll put all my incandescent light bulbs back in the lamps and dump the CFL lights... Oh, wait, the government banned incandescents light bulbs because they waste energy. Still don't see the light?

author: dfmischler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 12:52:36 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 08, 2013, 11:23:46 amWhatever happened to changing hearts and minds rather than making stuff illegal?I think the goverment banned incandescent light bulbs because the manufacturers and distributors of the newer lighting technologies lobbied really hard for it. They knew their newer products were not ready to meet consumers' needs on a level playing field (e.g. full output at initial startup). It doesn't help that the packages tell you the bulb will last e.g. 10 years based on the projected percentage of new bulb output when the customer wants to know longevity based primarily on MTBF.

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 01:05:39 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 08, 2013, 11:23:46 amhow do you intend to ban information/data? have mandatory logging of every packet transmitted and mandatory analysis of every encrypted packet?

author: nitro2k01
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 02:46:34 pm
content: Quote from: Fsck on August 08, 2013, 01:05:39 pmIt's obviously a futile exercise to try to people from trading BTC. A "ban" would likely consist of banning/blacklisting BTC exchanges, and maybe even banning companies from accepting BTC as payment. This would make it practically useless for many users. Such roadblocks are already in place even though they they do not constitute an outright "ban" at this point.

author: Rufus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2013, 04:16:13 pm
content: Quote from: dfmischler on August 08, 2013, 12:52:36 pmPoliticians want to change hearts and minds where legislation would result in the prosecution of law breaking voters.Where legislation which might result in prosecution of a few companies that have no vote they don't give a shit, unless of course those companies are bribing them.

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2013, 02:03:05 am
content: Legislation is the governments way of stating that it does not trust the populance.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2013, 02:05:32 am
content: Bitcoin makes a lot of sense for those stuck with electric heating and no practical way to use a heat pump or other way to get heat. The bitcoins produced "subsidize" the cost of electricity, which turns into heat anyways. Therefore, they could use just any hardware they could get, since any return is positive relative to plain resistance heating.

author: MacAttak
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 09, 2013, 07:52:55 am
content: FWIW my previous statement about it still being profitable to mine bitcoins on a typical home PC is already no longer really valid.In just the last two weeks alone, the global hashing speed has increased ridiculously quickly. My mining pool alone has seen a 30% - 40% rise in hash rates. I'm not sure what hardware suddenly went online, but yeah, it is not really viable now (even with USB ASICS) unless you have thousands of dollars to invest in large rigs.It would be smarter to buy bitcoins and hold onto them instead.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2013, 01:18:07 pm
content: Quote from: nitro2k01 on August 08, 2013, 02:46:34 pmI'm not quite sure how even that would work. Isn't a bitcoin essentially a block of data which constitutes mathematical proof that some very processor intensive operation has been carried out? In other words, it's just a piece of data which is regarded to have value - just like a music file, movie, chunk of source code, or any other intellectual property.

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2013, 01:49:26 pm
content: "Isn't a bitcoin essentially a block of data which constitutes mathematical proof that some very processor intensive operation has been carried out?"yes that's ONE bitcoins, also the bitcoins network is interesting and involve public transations and other interesting arguments.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2013, 07:33:04 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 08, 2013, 11:23:46 amPersonally I believe the government banned incandescent bulbs for _other_ reasons, including bribery. I have yet to see any study that compares the total product power usage per year for CCFLs vs incandescents when including total manufacturing costs, energy and materials consumption, given a realistic MTBF and replacement rate for each. Not to mention that tungsten bulbs contain no poisonous substances, while CCFLs contain many. (Mercury, the rare-earth phosphors, the fibreglass, aluminium, semiconductors, ferrites, electrolytics, plastics, and so on.) That whole changeover was insane imo. And FORCING it on us was yet another kind of insanity.QuotePerhaps the NSA decided it would have a go at bitcoin mining. if you can't beat them, join them. Then shoot them in the back.