Energy which is used to mindlessly calculate dumb hashes, trillions of which are discarded every second for the winning 'hash'. Proof of Work is basically lottery, but which consumes energy instead of tickets.

Not a miner. I do use a computer to calculate dumb stuff all the time for entertainment purposes.

I mean… Cyberpunk 2077 could run acceptably on an integrated 65W APU but instead I chose to crank everything on max with ray tracing through a 4090 just to see some dumb frames on a screen that are discarded at a hundred per second.

And I don’t ever remember having to ask permission to use the kW h I’m paying for.

I'm not sure gamers have over-specced their gaming machines to the extent they're using more electricity than a medium-sized European country...

Are you suggesting the combined power usage of gamers specing their machines above average recommended system requirements is less than the power used by mining industry? I’m skeptical about that.

And its beside the point because again its none of your business.

> Are you suggesting the combined power usage of gamers specing their machines above average recommended system requirements is less than the power used by mining industry? I’m skeptical about that.

Yes, of course, I am absolutely suggesting that overspecced gaming PCs played by a minority of gamers in their spare time don't use more electricity than a medium sized developed country (or indeed the 24/7 running of industrial scale server farms deploying chips designed because even the most powerful gaming chips weren't anywhere near energy intensive enough to win the energy-burning competition). Why would you possibly consider the small number of people using high spec gaming PCs a few hours a day use more electricity than a developed world country?

Still skeptical and like I said I would not care if they do because it’s none of my business how they use the energy they pay for.

Why don’t you go for power companies instead and demand clean energy investments? Might be a better use of your activism instead of just going for people using their own stuff in a way you don’t like. It’s not going to end well. I’m pretty sure the insane degrowth narrative will target gaming or other power intensive recreative uses sooner or later but that’s another discussion.

Calculating hashes in a loop is dumb, cyberpunk is a pretty complex piece of code which also utilises GPU aspects like ray tracing,

> just to see some dumb frames on a screen that are discarded at a hundred per second.

If these frames were really discarded (that is, not shown on your screen), then yes, it would be a waste. But my understanding of your example is that these frames were displayed, and their light reached your eyeballs.

They are if the thing about the eye being limited to 60FPS is true.

Nobody has the power to unilaterally “set the price” of energy, it’s set by the market.

Free markets are great for a lot of things, but pricing in externalities isn’t one of them.

Agreed but I think people should be looking at power companies and how they generate energy for accountability instead of going for industry A and B. Wiping PoW from the face of the earth won’t make those coal plants in China go away.

No, but it will reduce the demand for what they produce. This isn’t hypothetical, even in the US there are examples of coal/natural gas plants getting brought back online for bitcoin mining (finger lakes NY; Hardin, MT)