5 ms·

People keep saying this. But are have you also thought about how wasteful is Facebook or Instagram or Youtube are? Do you know how much electricity Facebook bur

by erentz 9y ago

People keep saying this. But are have you also thought about how wasteful is Facebook or Instagram or Youtube are? Do you know how much electricity Facebook burns running computers to serve fake images and shitty news? Or Youtube serving Logan Paul videos? If we really care about the environment we wouldn't be playing this game of trying to say one kind of environment destroying energy consumption is okay but another isn't. We would instead argue to directly solve the root problem, which is dirty energy polluting our environment, by making sure energy pricing covers that cost. That way the market can tell us if Logan Paul videos are more valuable to people than say Bitcoin, and we would actually do something to fix the environment rather than simply making it cheaper for one energy consumer (Youtube) to pollute at the expense of outlawing another (Bitcoin).

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Facebook, Google, and Amazon all buy renewable energy for their computing operations through the use of power purchase agreements.
- erentz 9y ago
  True, they're all about 50% renewable this year, aiming to be 100% at some time. I'm a bit skeptical of this argument though. If we go down this path we have to answer what percentage of bitcoin mining is from renewable sources too. As I understood it (correct me if I'm wrong) a very large amount of Bitcoin mining is located around hydro sources to get cheap hydro electricity. That would mean the same argument that Youtube is green would apply equally to Bitcoin. But then I suspect someone would say something like "well they're using power from a hydro dam in china but look at all of China's coal plants, now other chinese people have to buy from those coal plants" to which we'd probably have to then say "yeah, kind of like when Microsoft buys Columbia river power cuz it's cheap and green or Facebook buys solar and wind power because its green that means that someone else in America can't buy that green power and is "using" power from one of our coal plants too". It's all one grid at the end of the day.
usaphp 9y ago
> People keep saying this. But are have you also thought about how wasteful is Facebook or Instagram or Youtube are? It’s like saying that actors are wasting food and energy by doing what they do. Facebook YouTube and others are here for our entertainment, meanwhile bitcoin right now is mostly used by people with a final goal of selling it and making money. Most of the miners I know don’t ever use it to purchase something or send money to someone. That’s the problem in my opinion
- erentz 9y ago
  See here you've gone straight into making a value judgement that you don't believe Bitcoin is useful, therefore we should permit Logan Paul videos but we shouldn't permit Bitcoin. But other people are happy to spend their money to buy electricity to burn it to mine Bitcoin. Just as you're okay with people spending money to watch ads and download videos. And without installing monitoring in everyone's home to make sure they don't decide to mine bitcoin on their laptops, or contravine whatever other new things we want to outlaw, then we can never shut it down so it's all moot. And if it's all moot then perpetuating this pointless "bitcoin burning electricity bad, youtube burning electricity okay" fad that is going on for some reason is a waste and a distraction from real problems and real solutions. The solution is to make sure whoever is burning electricity doing anything is paying the true cost of that electricity. Because there is literally nothing else you can do here if you really care about the environment.
  - usaphp 9y ago
    Fair enough, I misunderstood your original comment at first, now I got it. You make a valid point.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    > here you've gone straight into making a value judgement Much like you did when you said: > to serve fake images and shitty news ?
    - jhasse 9y ago
cesarb 9y ago
Setting aside the tu quoque argument, there's a fundamental difference between Youtube/Facebook and Bitcoin: For Facebook/Instagram/Youtube, the incentive is to lower the power use. Google pays directly for the power used by their servers which host Youtube, so lowering their power usage immediately benefits Google. They also have indirect incentives to lower the power consumption on the client for their video/audio codecs. For Bitcoin, however, the incentive is to use as much power as possible. If a more efficient miner is manufactured, the incentive is to use more miners. The only ceiling to the amount of power used by Bitcoin miners is when the price paid for the power gets above the expected average block reward.

by erentz 9y ago

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Facebook, Google, and Amazon all buy renewable energy for their computing operations through the use of power purchase agreements.

erentz 9y ago
True, they're all about 50% renewable this year, aiming to be 100% at some time. I'm a bit skeptical of this argument though. If we go down this path we have to answer what percentage of bitcoin mining is from renewable sources too. As I understood it (correct me if I'm wrong) a very large amount of Bitcoin mining is located around hydro sources to get cheap hydro electricity. That would mean the same argument that Youtube is green would apply equally to Bitcoin. But then I suspect someone would say something like "well they're using power from a hydro dam in china but look at all of China's coal plants, now other chinese people have to buy from those coal plants" to which we'd probably have to then say "yeah, kind of like when Microsoft buys Columbia river power cuz it's cheap and green or Facebook buys solar and wind power because its green that means that someone else in America can't buy that green power and is "using" power from one of our coal plants too". It's all one grid at the end of the day.

usaphp 9y ago

> People keep saying this. But are have you also thought about how wasteful is Facebook or Instagram or Youtube are? It’s like saying that actors are wasting food and energy by doing what they do. Facebook YouTube and others are here for our entertainment, meanwhile bitcoin right now is mostly used by people with a final goal of selling it and making money. Most of the miners I know don’t ever use it to purchase something or send money to someone. That’s the problem in my opinion

erentz 9y ago
See here you've gone straight into making a value judgement that you don't believe Bitcoin is useful, therefore we should permit Logan Paul videos but we shouldn't permit Bitcoin. But other people are happy to spend their money to buy electricity to burn it to mine Bitcoin. Just as you're okay with people spending money to watch ads and download videos. And without installing monitoring in everyone's home to make sure they don't decide to mine bitcoin on their laptops, or contravine whatever other new things we want to outlaw, then we can never shut it down so it's all moot. And if it's all moot then perpetuating this pointless "bitcoin burning electricity bad, youtube burning electricity okay" fad that is going on for some reason is a waste and a distraction from real problems and real solutions. The solution is to make sure whoever is burning electricity doing anything is paying the true cost of that electricity. Because there is literally nothing else you can do here if you really care about the environment.
- usaphp 9y ago
  Fair enough, I misunderstood your original comment at first, now I got it. You make a valid point.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  > here you've gone straight into making a value judgement Much like you did when you said: > to serve fake images and shitty news ?
  - jhasse 9y ago

cesarb 9y ago

Setting aside the tu quoque argument, there's a fundamental difference between Youtube/Facebook and Bitcoin: For Facebook/Instagram/Youtube, the incentive is to lower the power use. Google pays directly for the power used by their servers which host Youtube, so lowering their power usage immediately benefits Google. They also have indirect incentives to lower the power consumption on the client for their video/audio codecs. For Bitcoin, however, the incentive is to use as much power as possible. If a more efficient miner is manufactured, the incentive is to use more miners. The only ceiling to the amount of power used by Bitcoin miners is when the price paid for the power gets above the expected average block reward.