Post AZYzhov8dDaKJwLJs8 by newt@stereophonic.space
(DIR) More posts by newt@stereophonic.space
(DIR) Post #AZYNePzuHbOze9VucK by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T09:50:12Z
3 likes, 7 repeats
Texas' government just spent $31.7M in the middle of a heat wave and energy shortage.No, not to provide fresh shelter to the homeless. Neither to install booths with free fresh water. Neither to increase the number of public spaces (outside of shopping malls) where people can gather, instead of burning energy to keep their homes cool 24/7. Neither to boost its investments in renewables and pivot away from the oil that it keeps digging.No, the government just gave that money away to Bitcoin miners to convince them to turn off their energy-hungry machines, so everybody else can also use energy to keep themselves cool.Let that sink in. Even a life-threatening heatwave can't get miners to behave cooperatively and turn off their machines, whose only purpose is as pointless as randomly guessing a number whose SHA256 hash satisfies a certain arbitrary numeric constraint - and they skim some profits out of these pointless puzzles just because someone decided that putting up a system with such perverse financial incentives was a good idea. In order to get them to behave as someone who's not a complete selfish sociopath and evolutionary failure, the government had to compensate them for the losses that they would make by turning off their computers.I guess that today's capitalism is that system where it's actually ok for the government to spend public money - as long as that money goes to those who need it the least.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-cryptocurrency-riot-texas-power-grid/
(DIR) Post #AZYbiohGYEQX14nRVw by DeltaWye@mstdn.social
2023-09-08T10:21:46Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight When is ERCOT going install some additional HVDC (AC grid <> HVDC <> other AC grid) converter stations so they can sell renewable energy to the eastern and western interconnect and also get support when they’re in a bind?Can’t they get an RIO installing those just on excess renewables - solar and wind that’s already available in the state as well as potential for future developments?
(DIR) Post #AZYbipaDFwNZlUVK9w by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T10:37:32Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@DeltaWye This article from a few months ago was actually quite interesting: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/solar-power-rising-heat-and-bitcoin-are-wild-cards-for-texas-gridLong story short, Texas is the State with the highest energy produced via renewables (~40 GW of installed power), but it also has a baseline of ~5.3 GW (with estimated peaks of ~10 GW) of power required just by Bitcoin miners.Give renewable energy to an oil-digging sociopath cowboy, and they'll waste sun and wind to get even richer in the dumbest possible ways, while they keep digging oil.The Bloomberg article (which was published in March) actually made an almost prescient forecast. "Given a spike in energy demand due to an upcoming record-breaking summer, and given how much of the energy baseline of the State is sucked up by miners, will Bitcoin collapse the Texan grid?"The answer, a few months later, is yes - to the point that ERCOT had to pay the miners for turning off their servers, instead of suing them for literally stealing energy when everybody needs it.
(DIR) Post #AZYbiqTrv0tmY6XluS by DeltaWye@mstdn.social
2023-09-08T10:59:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight Huge companies are going to love Texas when they end up losing millions in blackouts. I mean even looking at it from a hyper-capitalistic standpoint, these decisions don’t make any sense. How are you going to run a factory, an oil refinery, a datacenter reliably in Texas? Unless you go back to the Electricity 1.0 era where each place needed it’s own powerhouse. But you’re not going to run a 50MW arc furnace with solar panels on your property. Not yet.
(DIR) Post #AZYbirPITUptQDPdQG by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T12:00:18Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@DeltaWye Well it's one of the many contradiction of hyper-capitalism.If the government is never supposed to intervene into the market for the market to function properly, then it's not supposed to intervene even when the market is actually getting dysfunctional.
(DIR) Post #AZYqLOMTnVbrzVMVk0 by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T15:12:35.071245Z
4 likes, 1 repeats
@blacklight imagine blaming capitalism for the government wasting tax money lmao
(DIR) Post #AZYqf4kmPRwyyA78zo by meowski@fluf.club
2023-09-08T15:16:33.445283Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight somehow it sounds like information is missing from this story. did they just extend the same energy credits to the miners that everyone else gets?
(DIR) Post #AZYqlJ6lx4tfE9N9rk by tetranomos@mas.to
2023-09-08T13:04:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight and how could it have been possible without the posterchild of a sexualized mental disorder? https://news.bitcoin.com/the-many-facts-pointing-to-john-nash-being-satoshi-nakamoto
(DIR) Post #AZYqlJwspKa3plkm5g by tetranomos@mas.to
2023-09-08T13:14:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight the scope or range of credit introductions are the problem, not the hash-cracking, as dr. katharina pistor shows in The Code of Capital. we should stop thinking that the hash-cracking itself somehow creates "perverse" incentives. the perverse incentives are already part and parcel to your economic systems.
(DIR) Post #AZYqlKiNyiZuD5yi8G by tetranomos@mas.to
2023-09-08T13:19:21Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight it's patently false to suppose that "cryptocurrency" somehow introduced "perverse" incentives than acted on them https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes
(DIR) Post #AZYqlLNVVpTIGdDYEC by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T13:27:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tetranomos Is it false to say that without proof-of-work, and without the financial incentive given by the mining commissions, we wouldn't have a big share of today's computing power dedicated to the pointless brute forcing of SHA hashes?
(DIR) Post #AZYqlM9Mdtkif3blp2 by tetranomos@mas.to
2023-09-08T13:57:37Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight yes. there are many such projects which haven't panned out: computing power dedicated under google health, a decommissioned project that, while it wasn't about sha hashes, it did come down to using computing power in a way that was incongruent with public interests. i'm more so speaking from such an extrapolation: using computing power in an incongruent way that defies public interests. our efforts have had a knack for preferring the sustainability of the unsustainable.
(DIR) Post #AZYqlMsjvC34vmq0Y4 by tetranomos@mas.to
2023-09-08T14:00:31Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight i believe it's understandable to look at a particular mechanic or feature of, say, Bitcoin, and call it the source of the problem, but all i should hope to point out here is that i believe focusing on the mechanisms or abstractions in how Bitcoin works, talk about hash-cracking, and so on, misses the wider trend that prefers unsustainable solution-spaces. ecological senses, or ecognosticism, is left wanting everywhere else too.
(DIR) Post #AZYqlNaLJ4vX71EpVo by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T15:04:32Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@tetranomos Sure, there's a widespread waste of computing resources. Google Heath is a good example, and we could also add the amount of resources wasted in ML (and in statistical learning in general), planned obsolescence, software written using wasteful frameworks that end up wasting too many resources etc.I agree that there's a common thread behind all these problems - the assumption that computing resources are cheap and inexhaustable, and therefore it's cheaper to build inefficient solutions rather than spending more engineering resources building efficient ones. That mindset needs to be reshaped in a world that has agreed to no longer make assumptions about inexhaustible resources.But it's important not to lose track of the scale. All the other problems, however big, pale in comparison to Bitcoin - and proof-of-work in general.I mean, the waste of resources in the ML field is abysmal (something I've denounced for a long time), but so far no country in the world has (yet) reached a point where something like ~10% of their generated electricity in some areas goes exclusively into training ML models.Bitcoin mining has already reached that point - first in Inner Mongolia some years ago, then in Western Kazakhstan a couple of years ago, and now in Texas.All of that energy to process <0.001% of what Visa and Mastercard process on a daily basis, for a tiny fraction of that energy.And most of that energy is wasted in the hash cracking part - not in the transmission of packets across the network. It's not the distributed network itself that is inefficient, it's exclusively about the choice of the algorithm picked to reach distributed consensus.This is literally the most inefficient solution that our species has ever thought of, on a scale that is several orders of magnitude higher than the next most inefficient solution.
(DIR) Post #AZYzhn7TKOGKjc68oq by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T15:30:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@newt Yes, the Texan grid problem was there even before the State became the new haven for miners.But even a more efficient grid wouldn't solve the underlying problem.We're talking of **10%** (or more in some areas) of the energy demand of a *whole state* sucked up only by a tiny bunch of businesses and individuals - and all of that energy goes up in cracking pointless puzzles for a distributed Ponzi scheme.For context, even the former Ilva in Taranto (a huge steel factory that covers a big chunk of the city and gives jobs to ~10-20% of the local population) consumes only a fraction of that amount.If you make the grid better without changing the mindset, and without cracking down on those who make an irrational usage of shared resources, then all you get is more miners flooding to the wild West, not a less strained grid.But Texans are way too scared of socialism to dare to even have a say in how a company should behave. Even when the market goes dysfunctional and a couple of companies start literally stealing fresh air from everybody else.Even when that happens, the State still prefers to pay a bribe with public money to the rich folks to convince them to shut down their gambling den at least for a bit, rather than giving that money to those who need it the most in the middle of a heatwave.I fully blame all of this on capitalism, yes. Or, at least, on this steroid-ridden dystopian version of capitalism that defies every common sense about how an intelligent species is supposed to behave in order to thrive and evolve.
(DIR) Post #AZYzhov8dDaKJwLJs8 by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T16:56:41.543661Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight literally stealing? Don't they pay for that consumed electricity?
(DIR) Post #AZZ1yzX0dMAC3pN8z2 by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T17:20:24Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@newt this is a naive way of looking at economics.If something is available in an unlimited supply (or the supply is large enough compared to the demand to be considered practically unlimited), then yes, if you pay for something you have all the right to get it - as much as you want of it.That's because your demand is unlikely to trigger a supply shortage, and either push up prices for everyone else, or put heavy constraint on their demand.That no longer applies when supply is short, or somebody's demand has a strong impact on the supply.In the first half of 2020, if you saw somebody walk in a shopping mall and buy 50% of the available toilet paper just for its little household, you probably wouldn't have said "oh, if he has the money to buy it then I'm ok with it".
(DIR) Post #AZZ1z0LhasiGb35czw by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T17:22:57.403773Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight i'm actually ok with people buying as much toilet paper as they want. The last thing I can imagine is demanding that the government regulates the sales of toilet paper.
(DIR) Post #AZZ4Q6mXz4UKH7hLRg by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T17:47:20Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@newt that puts you at odds with almost any other human I know of. Most of them would have been outraged seeing somebody walk away from a supermarket with all the supply of toilet paper in a moment where there was an acute shortage for everybody else.It also sits at odds with the common sense that our species has built through eons of evolution. We've thrived through collaboration, and even more primitive species than ours are sophisticated enough to realize when a shared vital resource is scarce, and therefore it should be shared more equally with others so the chances of survival can be maximized for the whole species.So, besides being economically naive and firmly standing in the sociopath field, the theory that everybody can do whatever they want with their money regardless on their impact on others can also safely be labeled as an evolutionary aberration.
(DIR) Post #AZZ4Q7WdDjLqa3G9HE by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T17:50:15.782924Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight >evolutionary aberration.Wow thanks, I'll use it as my next nickname!So, back to your point. Your argument is.. greed and jealousy? I mean, you can call me naive all you want, but as far as I'm concern, the government always makes the problems it's supposed to solve much worse. You're kinda proving my point for me here.
(DIR) Post #AZZ7Z09iI1WgC0Sxay by Aviva_Gary@noc.social
2023-09-08T18:25:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight Okay... first the comments in this thread are amazing!Second... who is shocked this happened. The best part is this will continue and eventually won't work. The miners are greedy, the grid can only take so much... this is playing with fire (or heat?).
(DIR) Post #AZZ8jNPolVVNBJVg9I by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T18:36:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@newt > the government always makes the problems it's supposed to solve much worseThat's an awful generalization that sits at the core of the anarco-capitalist naiveness.And it leads to curious contradictions.The argument is that the government shouldn't intervene, otherwise the market can't function properly.But then it shouldn't intervene even when its inaction actually causes the market to become dysfunctional - like when a single business sucks away resources from everybody else, or it creates a monopoly with high entry barriers for everyone else, or it gets too much lobbying power over democratic institutions, or it concentrates power to the point that the economy is no longer competitive.It's an awful generalization also because it assumes that every government action is bad, regardless of the action itself. Which is an awful generalization for the same reason why "everything X does is bad" is an awful generalization.In this case, the government actually identified the right problem (in order to avoid rolling blackouts for everyone, the biggest non-essential consumers of electricity must reduce their consumption during supply shortages), but it implemented the worse possible solution for the problem (instead of suing them or taxing them out of business, and using the tax revenue to expand their strained grid, it bribed them with public money in order to temporarily shut down their gambling den).Luckily the political doctrine in the US hasn't always been like this. There was a time, a century ago, where the government actually went after corporate abuses, it even enacted the best antitrust regulation of the time that helped keep its economy healthy and competitive, and it invested into big public projects and it created a good welfare safety network that led to the economic boom after WWII.Nowadays, a President pushing for something like FDR's New Deal, the Marshall Plan or the antitrust regulation of the early 20th century would be seen as an irredimable communist instead. Better let the miners waste electricity on cracking SHA hashes (or bribe them to stop) while everybody else experiences rolling blackouts while it's 40C outside.I hope that you folks go over this collective anarco-capitalist hallucination soon before inflicting more damage to yourselves and everybody else.
(DIR) Post #AZZ8jOJpPGJ9z1iPS4 by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T18:38:35.888189Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight >That's an awful generalization that sits at the core of the anarco-capitalist naivenessNow you call me ancap. I'm not. Nor I'm going to read the rest of your wall of text, thank you for writing it anyway.
(DIR) Post #AZZ8pJgtWfp9MqKVrE by mia@freespeechextremist.com
2023-09-08T18:40:07.648733Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight I am launching p2pool and starting a miner just to piss you off right now.
(DIR) Post #AZZ91dYpTZKOT4QrM8 by harblinger@shitposter.club
2023-09-08T18:42:20.664227Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@newt @blacklight "y'see we have to defend democracy so that the government takes the money and spends it correctly" the absolute state
(DIR) Post #AZZBWovrRlNgcaCbU8 by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T19:07:37Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@newt In short, anarco-capitalist is someone who thinks that all government intervention is bad, and the invisible hand of the market must fix the market itself without any direction from above. Which was already naive in Smith's time, let alone in the 21st century.
(DIR) Post #AZZBWpwFhnHvk5OQjY by newt@stereophonic.space
2023-09-08T19:09:55.549153Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight I know who they are. I'm not with them.
(DIR) Post #AZZVz7oepS9yNcbh20 by GothFvck@metalhead.club
2023-09-08T17:59:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklightI hope everyone who complains about this never uses a desktop or gaming laptop. And posts from a cell phone, tablet, or singleboard computer.And doesn't use the older style electric stoves but, induction cooktops and microwaves instead. Not during peak hours.And keeps eir own AC to 72°F or warmer.And, if doesn't use solar or wind directly, opts to use nuclear or buys credits for solar or wind farm generated power.Don't believe all the FUD against cryptocurrency. 😉
(DIR) Post #AZZVz8gXb7GH4joj1E by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
2023-09-08T19:15:41Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@GothFvck When a bunch of gamers will draw enough electricity with their LAN parties to suck up ~10-20% of the wind and solar capacity of a State and cause rolling blackouts, to the point that they have to get into agreements with the State energy provider to push some energy back into the grid in case of supply shortages and bribed to turn off their machines during a drought, then we can talk about this.Again, the problem with these comments is that they miss the scale of the problem. Sure, using liquid nitrogen to keep your gaming station cool while you play Baldur's Gate at the highest resolution while there's a drought and 40C outside is a bit despicable. But it still falls several orders of magnitude behind the consumption of a mining farm.
(DIR) Post #AZZbwDRA4adafZc3VI by pernia@cum.salon
2023-09-09T00:06:05.283429Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@blacklight can't you raise the price of electricity? i'm lost as what the problem is