Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
[Opinion] prefix
Opinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
[email protected]
[email protected]
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @[email protected].
Besides the climate implications, this highlights the centralization risks in Proof of Work mining; the only way to mine Bitcoin profitably is if you have some kind of privileged access to electricity with effectively low ongoing cost, and that access is gated by government regulation.
I understand the appeal of bitcoin as an alternative financial system, and I think there is a legitimate case to be made for crypto mining with power plants.
For example, we've lost almost all of our nuclear power plant fleet in NY because renewables made it uneconomical to keep them running, using crypto as a flexible load to keep those plants online would have been a great synergy. Similarly, pairing crypto with renewables would be fine.
But keeping fossil fuel plants running purely to mine crypto is suicidal as a species.
That's not why we lost nearly all of our nuclear power...
Yeah! Don't use power plants for crypto. Use it for AI, as god intended.
/S
You joke, but that's exactly what's starting to happen. The infrastructure that was being built for more crypto mining is in many cases being repurposed to run AI farms.