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A comment on Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigat... by madrox on Thursday June 07, 2018 @05:35PM (#17260503)
It continues to bother me that simply by having a problem with this particular argument against bitcoin, people assume I'm pro-bitcoin mining. Isn't it enough to have a problem with fallacious arguments?

Oh I think bitcoin is plenty destructive, but it's a simple fact that we never critique ANY other technology or field in terms of energy consumption this way. We don't break down the industry-at-large in terms of energy consumption, and evaluate whether that's a valuable ROI. We don't do that because doing so is reductive.

Power isn't fungible.

You know what I think is a waste? All the brain power and human resource time spent on solving problems with bitcoin when we could be putting that time toward going to Mars.

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Re:Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigat... by perl4ever on Friday June 08, 2018 @09:19AM (#17264969)
"it's a simple fact that we never critique ANY other technology or field in terms of energy consumption this way"

We do, though. I just did. I pointed out that a $100 bill costs about 10 cents to make, whereas mining $100 worth of BTC requires $100 in electricity be used.

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