4 ms·

And let's quantify the waste of resources by storing vast buckets of useless data people put on the internet. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus. What a

And let's quantify the waste of resources by storing vast buckets of useless data people put on the internet. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Google Plus. What about the PoP's the house the IP transit traffic? How about the thousands of advertisement/Spam companies that just add to the noise? Telemarketers and their like (legal and not). Surely there is a better argument to be made here. Speculative "mining" on consumer purchased hardware is hardly near the top of global wasted resources.

sjm 9y ago
So your argument is because it's not the "top of globally wasted resources", we should ignore the waste? It's a large enough industry that GPU stock and prices are hugely affected by it, and its much more conventionally wasteful than the services you're trying to compare it to. Plus if the goal of cryptocurrency is to become more mainstream, this is a super important argument to make against it in its current form.
- dozzie 9y ago
  > So your argument is because it's not the "top of globally wasted resources", we should ignore the waste? Sometimes this argumentation is totally valid. For example, it's utterly stupid reasoning when one uses less water at home "to save fresh water and environment", because households use half of the fresh water used by industry, and agriculture uses twice as much as the two combined. Whatever inconvenience the person trying to save the environment this way puts themselves into, the effect is capped at about 10% of total fresh water consumption. It's an effort applied in the wrong place.
  - chenglou 9y ago
    Saving water or such is a mentality and you might not be able to measure it through a simple people * saving/person. If everyone's wasteful there'd be way less incentive to nudge industries into changing. Where would the change be coming from? More philosophically speaking, if there's an equation of life with all the variables and we apply it here by taking all the "saved effort thanks to not promoting water consciousness in regular households" and dumping it into whichever area we'd think is ideally efficient, it wouldn't be _too_ surprising if holistically, the result comes out less favorable of this approach vs just telling regular folks to save water. For example, consider that it might take tenfold the effort to convince an agricultural company CEO to change approach; if ninefold the effort doesn't reach the activation energy to convince such person then you're better off telling nine people to stop the waste. In general, I have the feeling that many decisions can wrongly be made to look stupid if we recalculate it using the select few variables we care about.
    - dozzie 9y ago
      > If everyone's wasteful there'd be way less incentive to nudge industries into changing. Ah yes, "let's show them not to be wasteful". Ever heard of the activities of making industries not to use child labour or improve working conditions of factory workers? If they didn't work, why do you think this one would? > Where would the change be coming from? Certainly not from social movements. They rarely have enough power to make a single company change, much less a whole industry.
  - Cerium 9y ago
    Saving water can still be a false mentality. For example, my wife's hometown has poor water infrastructure. On vacation days everyone is home and nobody saves since the source is plenty. By noon the infrastructure is overloaded and gives out until evening. If people were more frugal everyone could have water all day.
volkk 9y ago
I could be completely wrong (I don't fully immerse myself in cryptocurrency) but isn't mining coins way more heavily intensive on a CPU and overall power consumption than simply passively storing a lot of personal data? I remember a couple of friends wanting to buy some powerful machines to mine bitcoins a few years ago, and they had to actually calculate their electricity bill to make sure they weren't losing money. That's quite a ways from storing Instagram pics.
- seqastian 9y ago
  The argument is not about individual intensity, but about absolute numbers. Millions of people on facebook/google/twitter compared to few crypto miners.
  - volkk 9y ago
    I would hesitate to use the word "few." Imagine the power consumption in a place like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvxk3/chinas-biggest-secret-bitcoin-mine https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvxk3/chinas-big...
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      Instagram et all provides humans with a great deal of value compared to bitcoin though. Rather than hashing random things they allow communication and entertainment.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        Don't project your preferences on others.
beepboopbeep 9y ago
Why isn't the current argument valuable unto it self? We don't need to equate it to anything in order to measure it's worth (or lack there of). It's a valid statement that can be discussed. If you want to do the same for other data, go for it, but in another conversation.
jondubois 9y ago
Yes, pretty much everything in our current economy is extremely inefficient. In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. - Facebook ad spending is a waste; do companies actually get a ROI on all the money they give to Facebook? They don't actually know! In the grand scheme of things it's a complete waste. If Facebook didn't exist, then companies wouldn't be forced to pay it money just to stay relevant; they could focus their funds on actually improving their products instead. Not to mention the enormous amount of otherwise productive human hours that Facebook is responsible for wasting every day. That's not even counting all the other social networks. - Gambling; $240 billion per year; the money does nothing for society. The amount of money spent on gambling every year is MORE than the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies added up together. So even if you think that buying a cryptocurrency is gambling, your odds are much better (and improve as you do more research). If people stopped gambling on horses and lottery and started gambling with cryptocurrencies instead, the total market cap for cryptocurrencies would be much higher than it is now. - Sports; the sport industry makes $75 billion per year. Yes it's entertainment. So is trading cryptocurrencies. - Tobacco industry makes $35 billion in PROFITS per year. Doesn't add anything positive to society. I think that if you were to add up all fees (profits) ever charged for transferring cryptocurrencies, you wouldn't get anything close to $35 billion.
- DKnoll 9y ago
  Jon, all I need to do to check if any internet ad campaign is effective is check analytics. Facebook Ads can be very effective. Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries. Sports promote fitness. Cigarettes make me look cool (kidding).
  - neilwilson 9y ago
    "Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries." It doesn't. That's the myth that keeps you supporting the system. The truth is the other way around. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree-exists-822ee0ecb09a https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree...
root_axis 9y ago
The energy spent to facilitate these services are incidental to the work being performed; the total energy spent is a function of the task being accomplished. "Proof of work", on the other hand, is wasteful by design, which is obvious when you consider that "the work" itself is not useful, all that's useful is the assumption that the cost of wasting energy is too great to be worth it for a malicious actor. That isn't to say that POW cryptocurrencies themselves are useless, but they are certainly wasteful. An aversion to waste is literally the security mechanism.

sjm 9y ago

So your argument is because it's not the "top of globally wasted resources", we should ignore the waste? It's a large enough industry that GPU stock and prices are hugely affected by it, and its much more conventionally wasteful than the services you're trying to compare it to. Plus if the goal of cryptocurrency is to become more mainstream, this is a super important argument to make against it in its current form.

dozzie 9y ago
> So your argument is because it's not the "top of globally wasted resources", we should ignore the waste? Sometimes this argumentation is totally valid. For example, it's utterly stupid reasoning when one uses less water at home "to save fresh water and environment", because households use half of the fresh water used by industry, and agriculture uses twice as much as the two combined. Whatever inconvenience the person trying to save the environment this way puts themselves into, the effect is capped at about 10% of total fresh water consumption. It's an effort applied in the wrong place.
- chenglou 9y ago
  Saving water or such is a mentality and you might not be able to measure it through a simple people * saving/person. If everyone's wasteful there'd be way less incentive to nudge industries into changing. Where would the change be coming from? More philosophically speaking, if there's an equation of life with all the variables and we apply it here by taking all the "saved effort thanks to not promoting water consciousness in regular households" and dumping it into whichever area we'd think is ideally efficient, it wouldn't be _too_ surprising if holistically, the result comes out less favorable of this approach vs just telling regular folks to save water. For example, consider that it might take tenfold the effort to convince an agricultural company CEO to change approach; if ninefold the effort doesn't reach the activation energy to convince such person then you're better off telling nine people to stop the waste. In general, I have the feeling that many decisions can wrongly be made to look stupid if we recalculate it using the select few variables we care about.
  - dozzie 9y ago
    > If everyone's wasteful there'd be way less incentive to nudge industries into changing. Ah yes, "let's show them not to be wasteful". Ever heard of the activities of making industries not to use child labour or improve working conditions of factory workers? If they didn't work, why do you think this one would? > Where would the change be coming from? Certainly not from social movements. They rarely have enough power to make a single company change, much less a whole industry.
- Cerium 9y ago
  Saving water can still be a false mentality. For example, my wife's hometown has poor water infrastructure. On vacation days everyone is home and nobody saves since the source is plenty. By noon the infrastructure is overloaded and gives out until evening. If people were more frugal everyone could have water all day.

volkk 9y ago

I could be completely wrong (I don't fully immerse myself in cryptocurrency) but isn't mining coins way more heavily intensive on a CPU and overall power consumption than simply passively storing a lot of personal data? I remember a couple of friends wanting to buy some powerful machines to mine bitcoins a few years ago, and they had to actually calculate their electricity bill to make sure they weren't losing money. That's quite a ways from storing Instagram pics.

seqastian 9y ago
The argument is not about individual intensity, but about absolute numbers. Millions of people on facebook/google/twitter compared to few crypto miners.
- volkk 9y ago
  I would hesitate to use the word "few." Imagine the power consumption in a place like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvxk3/chinas-biggest-secret-bitcoin-mine https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvxk3/chinas-big...
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    Instagram et all provides humans with a great deal of value compared to bitcoin though. Rather than hashing random things they allow communication and entertainment.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      Don't project your preferences on others.

beepboopbeep 9y ago

Why isn't the current argument valuable unto it self? We don't need to equate it to anything in order to measure it's worth (or lack there of). It's a valid statement that can be discussed. If you want to do the same for other data, go for it, but in another conversation.

jondubois 9y ago

Yes, pretty much everything in our current economy is extremely inefficient. In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. - Facebook ad spending is a waste; do companies actually get a ROI on all the money they give to Facebook? They don't actually know! In the grand scheme of things it's a complete waste. If Facebook didn't exist, then companies wouldn't be forced to pay it money just to stay relevant; they could focus their funds on actually improving their products instead. Not to mention the enormous amount of otherwise productive human hours that Facebook is responsible for wasting every day. That's not even counting all the other social networks. - Gambling; $240 billion per year; the money does nothing for society. The amount of money spent on gambling every year is MORE than the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies added up together. So even if you think that buying a cryptocurrency is gambling, your odds are much better (and improve as you do more research). If people stopped gambling on horses and lottery and started gambling with cryptocurrencies instead, the total market cap for cryptocurrencies would be much higher than it is now. - Sports; the sport industry makes $75 billion per year. Yes it's entertainment. So is trading cryptocurrencies. - Tobacco industry makes $35 billion in PROFITS per year. Doesn't add anything positive to society. I think that if you were to add up all fees (profits) ever charged for transferring cryptocurrencies, you wouldn't get anything close to $35 billion.

DKnoll 9y ago
Jon, all I need to do to check if any internet ad campaign is effective is check analytics. Facebook Ads can be very effective. Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries. Sports promote fitness. Cigarettes make me look cool (kidding).
- neilwilson 9y ago
  "Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries." It doesn't. That's the myth that keeps you supporting the system. The truth is the other way around. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree-exists-822ee0ecb09a https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree...

root_axis 9y ago

The energy spent to facilitate these services are incidental to the work being performed; the total energy spent is a function of the task being accomplished. "Proof of work", on the other hand, is wasteful by design, which is obvious when you consider that "the work" itself is not useful, all that's useful is the assumption that the cost of wasting energy is too great to be worth it for a malicious actor. That isn't to say that POW cryptocurrencies themselves are useless, but they are certainly wasteful. An aversion to waste is literally the security mechanism.