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When you think about it : a company selling computing power deliberately restrain its product’s computing power just to avoid running out-of-stock because someh

by pjerem 4y ago

When you think about it : a company selling computing power deliberately restrain its product’s computing power just to avoid running out-of-stock because somehow people discovered they can sell some database entry created by wasting the most precious and vital resource we can gather in limited supply (energy) from sources that are changing our only planet to a cooking oven. What a time to be alive. I’m really amazed at how we as a species are so impressively intelligent but also so mindblowingly dumb at the same time. But I’m not surprised : if you look at our species history : we were and are always just fighting our own stupidity.

DSingularity 4y ago
What a cynical take.
- gjvc 4y ago
  Accurate, though.
  - DSingularity 4y ago
    Yeah.. unfortunately.
xvector 4y ago
Crypto miners are not even a drop in the ocean when it comes to the fucked-up things that humanity does. The average person causes far more harm and literally millions of times more pain and suffering through their dietary choices alone than crypto miners ever could [1]. And we don't even get a trustless financial system out of it. Crypto miners are just easy to hate because it's an excellent opportunity for people to point the finger at someone else without introspecting on the fact that they are no better. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  Ah yeah sure, people running warehouses full of GPUs and reviving local coal power plants for their energy supply are doing less harm than than someone eating too much beef. Unlike meat consumption, mining doesn't map neatly onto the entire population. It's a rich few that can even buy this much compute power. Bitcoin is 137 TW/h/yr Etherium is 112 TW/h/yr (thanks for pointing out me messing up units) Those are both mid sized countries by now.
  - xvector 4y ago
    How does crypto mining come even close? Sorry, which beings am I immersing in extreme pain and suffering by running hashes on my GPU? Environmentally, Bitcoin and Ethereum's combined production of greenhouse gasses - ~50M tons CO2 - does not come anywhere close to the over 6 billion tons of CO2 of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by meat production. Again, orders of magnitude more environmental damage, alongside the greatest cycle of sheer pain and suffering this planet has ever seen, and we don't even get something out of it. How can people point fingers at crypto miners while engaging in this far more harmful behavior?
    - sascha_sl 4y ago
      It's a really terrible comparison and nothing but a cheap tu quoque. Crypto contributes nothing but a speculative asset to society. Meat production, while derailed into unsustainability, has a lot more utility and is also a lot harder to unwind from current culture. Try running a survey on which of the two people would rather forego, and your 100M to 6B ratio will look rather stupid. One shitty behavior doesn't excuse another.
      - xvector 4y ago
        > Meat production [...] has a lot more utility We will have to agree to disagree that stimulating the taste buds has more utility than providing a trustless financial system.
fxtentacle 4y ago
I have reached the same conclusion by walking around. On the one hand, our species has invented and built e-scooters which have GPS and an internet connection, a digital screen and 50km of range, which is an impressive energy and technology density for what used to be a children's toy. On the other hand, the insight that parking them on the bicycle lane is dangerous has evaded most of our species so far.
- Moru 4y ago
  And the companies renting them out as a business claims it's a green movement while they are replacing the whole fleet every two months because they break down.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure the lifetime of the scooters has increased significantly since those reports. Low lifetime was an artifact of rapid VC fueld expansions where the companies threw whatever hardware they could get on the streets. Subsequent iterations on the design improved durability.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      They look like tanks nowadays. It's pretty interesting to see how the design has improved to reduce repair time. The battery is no longer locked underneath the scooter, now you can just lift it out if you have the right tools. Which makes sense, the scooters probably got more expensive and to compensate they need to focus on ease of repairability.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  It hasn't evaded anyone. People just don't care. Parking e-scooters on bike lanes is dangerous for you, but convenient for me. The general lack of regulations and the total of $0 spent on enforcing them, leads to e-scooters drivers acting simultaneously like car, bikes, and pedestrian depending on what's most convenient.
  - 4y ago
hoseja 4y ago
>most precious and vital resource we can gather in limited supply (energy) ??? What leads one to this opinion? The problem with energy isn't that there isn't enough of it but we're not exploiting enough of it. I want a personal fusion reactor, not a tax on existing. Why does viscerally hating cryptobros lead people to wanting to kneecap humanity forever, huddling around solar-powered heaters in winter, eating impossible soy products?
- erk__ 4y ago
  I think the issue here is not how we could gather energy, but how it is done currently. A lot of crypto mining runs on limited resources such as gas or oil. If we had limitless power this would not be an issue of course, but that is a dream scenario
  - hoseja 4y ago
    Why are limited resources cheaper than unlimited ones? Won't the increased, focused demand for energy lead to innovation in that space?
    - erk__ 4y ago
      Because often it is cheaper to exploit the limited resources because that is what we have done for decades and already have a good infrastructure around it. There have been a lot of innovation in the area of renewables and "unlimited" resources such as solar. But it is not being driven by people needing more energy but by various regulations and now also price.
    - mort96 4y ago
      I don't think it's too interesting to talk about how oil, gas and coal are "limited resources", since we've clearly shown to be good at innovating in methods of extraction. The most interesting aspect to me isn't that we'll run out of oil/gas/coal, but that we'll have destroyed the environment through greenhouse gases long before we run out of those resources. With this analysis, it makes total sense why it would be cheap. Extracting fossil fuels is cheap and will continue to be so for a long time. The true cost of energy from oil, gas and coal is in the emissions, but those are externalities which aren't paid for by the people who use the energy. The only way increased energy demand would lead to innovation in renewables would be if those externalities were somehow made part of the cost of the energy, such as by a heavy carbon tax. But cryptobros are usually the right-libertarian types who wouldn't be in favor of that.
cafard 4y ago
"He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals ; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly." The life of Diogenes in Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius*, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D2 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
IshKebab 4y ago
It's not to avoid running out of stock; it's so that crypto miners have to buy a more expensive card. Same reason they don't allow gaming GPUs to be used in AI datacentres. It's called "price differentiation".

by pjerem 4y ago

DSingularity 4y ago

What a cynical take.

gjvc 4y ago
Accurate, though.
- DSingularity 4y ago
  Yeah.. unfortunately.

xvector 4y ago

Crypto miners are not even a drop in the ocean when it comes to the fucked-up things that humanity does. The average person causes far more harm and literally millions of times more pain and suffering through their dietary choices alone than crypto miners ever could [1]. And we don't even get a trustless financial system out of it. Crypto miners are just easy to hate because it's an excellent opportunity for people to point the finger at someone else without introspecting on the fact that they are no better. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

sascha_sl 4y ago
Ah yeah sure, people running warehouses full of GPUs and reviving local coal power plants for their energy supply are doing less harm than than someone eating too much beef. Unlike meat consumption, mining doesn't map neatly onto the entire population. It's a rich few that can even buy this much compute power. Bitcoin is 137 TW/h/yr Etherium is 112 TW/h/yr (thanks for pointing out me messing up units) Those are both mid sized countries by now.
- xvector 4y ago
  How does crypto mining come even close? Sorry, which beings am I immersing in extreme pain and suffering by running hashes on my GPU? Environmentally, Bitcoin and Ethereum's combined production of greenhouse gasses - ~50M tons CO2 - does not come anywhere close to the over 6 billion tons of CO2 of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by meat production. Again, orders of magnitude more environmental damage, alongside the greatest cycle of sheer pain and suffering this planet has ever seen, and we don't even get something out of it. How can people point fingers at crypto miners while engaging in this far more harmful behavior?
  - sascha_sl 4y ago
    It's a really terrible comparison and nothing but a cheap tu quoque. Crypto contributes nothing but a speculative asset to society. Meat production, while derailed into unsustainability, has a lot more utility and is also a lot harder to unwind from current culture. Try running a survey on which of the two people would rather forego, and your 100M to 6B ratio will look rather stupid. One shitty behavior doesn't excuse another.
    - xvector 4y ago
      > Meat production [...] has a lot more utility We will have to agree to disagree that stimulating the taste buds has more utility than providing a trustless financial system.

fxtentacle 4y ago

I have reached the same conclusion by walking around. On the one hand, our species has invented and built e-scooters which have GPS and an internet connection, a digital screen and 50km of range, which is an impressive energy and technology density for what used to be a children's toy. On the other hand, the insight that parking them on the bicycle lane is dangerous has evaded most of our species so far.

Moru 4y ago
And the companies renting them out as a business claims it's a green movement while they are replacing the whole fleet every two months because they break down.
- adrianN 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure the lifetime of the scooters has increased significantly since those reports. Low lifetime was an artifact of rapid VC fueld expansions where the companies threw whatever hardware they could get on the streets. Subsequent iterations on the design improved durability.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    They look like tanks nowadays. It's pretty interesting to see how the design has improved to reduce repair time. The battery is no longer locked underneath the scooter, now you can just lift it out if you have the right tools. Which makes sense, the scooters probably got more expensive and to compensate they need to focus on ease of repairability.
IMTDb 4y ago
It hasn't evaded anyone. People just don't care. Parking e-scooters on bike lanes is dangerous for you, but convenient for me. The general lack of regulations and the total of $0 spent on enforcing them, leads to e-scooters drivers acting simultaneously like car, bikes, and pedestrian depending on what's most convenient.
- 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago

>most precious and vital resource we can gather in limited supply (energy) ??? What leads one to this opinion? The problem with energy isn't that there isn't enough of it but we're not exploiting enough of it. I want a personal fusion reactor, not a tax on existing. Why does viscerally hating cryptobros lead people to wanting to kneecap humanity forever, huddling around solar-powered heaters in winter, eating impossible soy products?

erk__ 4y ago
I think the issue here is not how we could gather energy, but how it is done currently. A lot of crypto mining runs on limited resources such as gas or oil. If we had limitless power this would not be an issue of course, but that is a dream scenario
- hoseja 4y ago
  Why are limited resources cheaper than unlimited ones? Won't the increased, focused demand for energy lead to innovation in that space?
  - erk__ 4y ago
    Because often it is cheaper to exploit the limited resources because that is what we have done for decades and already have a good infrastructure around it. There have been a lot of innovation in the area of renewables and "unlimited" resources such as solar. But it is not being driven by people needing more energy but by various regulations and now also price.
  - mort96 4y ago
    I don't think it's too interesting to talk about how oil, gas and coal are "limited resources", since we've clearly shown to be good at innovating in methods of extraction. The most interesting aspect to me isn't that we'll run out of oil/gas/coal, but that we'll have destroyed the environment through greenhouse gases long before we run out of those resources. With this analysis, it makes total sense why it would be cheap. Extracting fossil fuels is cheap and will continue to be so for a long time. The true cost of energy from oil, gas and coal is in the emissions, but those are externalities which aren't paid for by the people who use the energy. The only way increased energy demand would lead to innovation in renewables would be if those externalities were somehow made part of the cost of the energy, such as by a heavy carbon tax. But cryptobros are usually the right-libertarian types who wouldn't be in favor of that.

cafard 4y ago

"He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals ; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly." The life of Diogenes in Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius*, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D2 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...

IshKebab 4y ago

It's not to avoid running out of stock; it's so that crypto miners have to buy a more expensive card. Same reason they don't allow gaming GPUs to be used in AI datacentres. It's called "price differentiation".