5 ms·

I wonder if anybody has estimations of the contribution of anti-virus software to global warming. They run on almost all desktop computers, are generally large

by hules 5y ago

I wonder if anybody has estimations of the contribution of anti-virus software to global warming. They run on almost all desktop computers, are generally large and bloated applications that consume tons of cpu for their continuous scans, I would not be too surprised if was far from negligible.

rileymat2 5y ago
Quibble, A/Vs can hook file accesses and executions so most of the time it is not continuously scanning.
garbagecoder 5y ago
So, we’re doing whataboutism for this now? You don’t have some answer like “using as much electricity as Argentina to mine bitcoins is the price of freedom”?
_8j50 5y ago
Ugh.. do you think AVs are useless or something? Why do people think this. Shit AVs are shit, end of story. Reading memory and is not cpu intensive the disk i/o intensity if windows vs linux alone is very drastic if you want to evaluate that as a baseline instead. It's like asking the carbon footprint of freeway guardrails. I mean, norton sucks, sure but at least turn on defender (which is really good btw). The amount if lives not ruined and money not lost due to cybercrime thanks to AVs alone is staggering imo
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Freeway guardrails have never deleted my car's engine while I was minding my own business staying on the road.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    They would be shitty guardrails if they did just like shit AV is shit. I am not asking you to buy norton but to at least leave defender turned on windows. It stops very real and serious threats. Like i have seen attackers move laterally and they only suceed on hosts where people turned off defender or it isn't updated. I have a challenge for any of you who disagree: write basic malware that you can use to monitor keystrokes and browser creds/traffic. Easy right? Ok, now use it in windows with defender turned on for a day and keep defender from stopping it for a week! Even better if you turn on all defender features. I mean come on! I heard this misninformation many times before. Not once from a person whose day job is incident response. Not even once!
- sockaddr 5y ago
  No, what's staggering is the number of my family members that simply cannot use their computer because it's bogged down by an AV. Also, your analogy is completely wack.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    Your av sucks then...
- HelloNurse 5y ago
  Even a protection racket reduces crime. The trick is that it is someone else's crime.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    For it to be a racket the av vendors need to collaborate with malwaee authors
    - HelloNurse 5y ago
      Actually, I meant a "honest" protection racket that protects against actual rival gangs. The point is that replacing something bad (malware) with something bad (AV software) isn't always a gain.
- Victerius 5y ago
  Yes, I think AVs are useless now, although that didn't used to be the case.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    This is one of thise silly things I see only among those with just enough knowledge to shoot their own feet. The amount malware I see stopped by defender alone is very significant. Just write mediocre malware and send email , 10-15% infection rate. Checkout the loot the emoter gang had accumulated when they got raided or any if the ransomware gangs. A little learning does much harm! Most people don't run Linux (Aand most Linux desktop users don't harden). I mean, I could be very lazy and make bank without AVs on windows or Mac. Speaking to you as someone who only discovered several serious intrusions after every layer of security was defeated except defender complained!
melling 5y ago
My 2 year old blog post has the answer to that. http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c... People come up with all sorts of silly ideas rather than actually addressing the real issue. Addressing virus software will save the world exactly 0 days. UPDATE Coal usage is at record usage for power generation. It emits over twice as much CO2 as natural gas while these silly little ideas about optimizing your website to use less electricity or using a different computer language are a fun way to waste the day, all the coal we keep burning is costing us significant time. Anything else is better. Waiting for the windmills isnt working. Anyway, just the occasional reminder that we keep squandering valuable time and now we need a bigger miracle. Good luck with the shaming to address the problem. UPDATE 2 "Stop all economic growth" No one said that. That is a right wing sound bite simply meant to add noise to the discussion.
- domano 5y ago
  The blogpost only states that we should use gas instead of coal, so if anyone hopes for an answer to the original question you dont need to click.
- hayd 5y ago
  "Stop all economic growth" I disagree with doing that even in the most developed countries, I've no idea how you imagine selling that to the least developed countries. Or by force? However, I agree we aren't really able to do enough - that there's a lot of virtue signalling so we feel a little better about ourselves - and a technological solution is what's required.
slg 5y ago
To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics don’t make sense, why would an individual dispose of an asset they bought with their personal money when there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the part of the asset that was purchased?
  - djur 5y ago
    Because they don't understand any of what you just said, and they think that malware can harm their computer.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      > … and they think that malware can harm their computer. To be fair, it actually can — there’s plenty of writable flash on motherboards and in peripherals where malware could persist across OS reinstallation.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
        To add to this, isn’t a computer in this context some combination of hardware and software. And malware is a contraction oh malicious-software. And then is it not true that malware does, by definition, harm the users experience in someway, whether that’s detectable by the user or not. Splitting technical hairs is entertaining though.
rdiddly 5y ago
My CPU fan is screaming next to me right now because of my employer's overly paranoid, inefficient scanning shitware (yep I checked the list of processes). Not only is it warming the globe, it's warming this room. If I put my hands near the exhaust ports it'll warm those as well.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Since it is winter it probably doesn't matter but if it were summer you'd probably then spend even more energy attempting to move that heat from inside to outside. (Unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, but statistically you're probably not :) )

by hules 5y ago

rileymat2 5y ago

Quibble, A/Vs can hook file accesses and executions so most of the time it is not continuously scanning.

garbagecoder 5y ago

So, we’re doing whataboutism for this now? You don’t have some answer like “using as much electricity as Argentina to mine bitcoins is the price of freedom”?

_8j50 5y ago

Ugh.. do you think AVs are useless or something? Why do people think this. Shit AVs are shit, end of story. Reading memory and is not cpu intensive the disk i/o intensity if windows vs linux alone is very drastic if you want to evaluate that as a baseline instead. It's like asking the carbon footprint of freeway guardrails. I mean, norton sucks, sure but at least turn on defender (which is really good btw). The amount if lives not ruined and money not lost due to cybercrime thanks to AVs alone is staggering imo

jjoonathan 5y ago
Freeway guardrails have never deleted my car's engine while I was minding my own business staying on the road.
- _8j50 5y ago
  They would be shitty guardrails if they did just like shit AV is shit. I am not asking you to buy norton but to at least leave defender turned on windows. It stops very real and serious threats. Like i have seen attackers move laterally and they only suceed on hosts where people turned off defender or it isn't updated. I have a challenge for any of you who disagree: write basic malware that you can use to monitor keystrokes and browser creds/traffic. Easy right? Ok, now use it in windows with defender turned on for a day and keep defender from stopping it for a week! Even better if you turn on all defender features. I mean come on! I heard this misninformation many times before. Not once from a person whose day job is incident response. Not even once!
sockaddr 5y ago
No, what's staggering is the number of my family members that simply cannot use their computer because it's bogged down by an AV. Also, your analogy is completely wack.
- _8j50 5y ago
  Your av sucks then...
HelloNurse 5y ago
Even a protection racket reduces crime. The trick is that it is someone else's crime.
- _8j50 5y ago
  For it to be a racket the av vendors need to collaborate with malwaee authors
  - HelloNurse 5y ago
    Actually, I meant a "honest" protection racket that protects against actual rival gangs. The point is that replacing something bad (malware) with something bad (AV software) isn't always a gain.
Victerius 5y ago
Yes, I think AVs are useless now, although that didn't used to be the case.
- _8j50 5y ago
  This is one of thise silly things I see only among those with just enough knowledge to shoot their own feet. The amount malware I see stopped by defender alone is very significant. Just write mediocre malware and send email , 10-15% infection rate. Checkout the loot the emoter gang had accumulated when they got raided or any if the ransomware gangs. A little learning does much harm! Most people don't run Linux (Aand most Linux desktop users don't harden). I mean, I could be very lazy and make bank without AVs on windows or Mac. Speaking to you as someone who only discovered several serious intrusions after every layer of security was defeated except defender complained!

melling 5y ago

My 2 year old blog post has the answer to that. http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-climate-change/ http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c... People come up with all sorts of silly ideas rather than actually addressing the real issue. Addressing virus software will save the world exactly 0 days. UPDATE Coal usage is at record usage for power generation. It emits over twice as much CO2 as natural gas while these silly little ideas about optimizing your website to use less electricity or using a different computer language are a fun way to waste the day, all the coal we keep burning is costing us significant time. Anything else is better. Waiting for the windmills isnt working. Anyway, just the occasional reminder that we keep squandering valuable time and now we need a bigger miracle. Good luck with the shaming to address the problem. UPDATE 2 "Stop all economic growth" No one said that. That is a right wing sound bite simply meant to add noise to the discussion.

domano 5y ago
The blogpost only states that we should use gas instead of coal, so if anyone hopes for an answer to the original question you dont need to click.
hayd 5y ago
"Stop all economic growth" I disagree with doing that even in the most developed countries, I've no idea how you imagine selling that to the least developed countries. Or by force? However, I agree we aren't really able to do enough - that there's a lot of virtue signalling so we feel a little better about ourselves - and a technological solution is what's required.

slg 5y ago

To be fair, they also are responsible for some reduction in carbon output. I have seen people just get a new machine if their computer gets too compromised with viruses so any level of virus protection will end up keeping computers out of landfills.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago
A computer that is compromised with viruses is easily remedied. Anyone can just reinstall the operating system from the OEMs supplied OS installation media or the user can provide their own operating system. I don’t buy this argument that anti-virus leads to fewer people throwing their assets out. Furthermore, viruses do not affect the underlying hardware, which is what people would be throwing away. The economics don’t make sense, why would an individual dispose of an asset they bought with their personal money when there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the part of the asset that was purchased?
- djur 5y ago
  Because they don't understand any of what you just said, and they think that malware can harm their computer.
  - teakettle42 5y ago
    > … and they think that malware can harm their computer. To be fair, it actually can — there’s plenty of writable flash on motherboards and in peripherals where malware could persist across OS reinstallation.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      To add to this, isn’t a computer in this context some combination of hardware and software. And malware is a contraction oh malicious-software. And then is it not true that malware does, by definition, harm the users experience in someway, whether that’s detectable by the user or not. Splitting technical hairs is entertaining though.

rdiddly 5y ago

My CPU fan is screaming next to me right now because of my employer's overly paranoid, inefficient scanning shitware (yep I checked the list of processes). Not only is it warming the globe, it's warming this room. If I put my hands near the exhaust ports it'll warm those as well.

jedberg 5y ago
Since it is winter it probably doesn't matter but if it were summer you'd probably then spend even more energy attempting to move that heat from inside to outside. (Unless you're in the Southern Hemisphere, but statistically you're probably not :) )