Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well put. I’ve noticed a definite condescension towards those “wasteful” people in climates that virtually require air conditioning in the summer (e.g. almost anywhere in the Southern US). Yet they conveniently forget that heating in cold climates is usually more energy intensive than A/C is in warm climates.
Or you can just get a sweatter and let the house get cold. So long as the pipes don't freeze, a furnace can easily be run less without a substantial reduction in comfort. On the other hand when it's hot, there is only so nude you can get.
A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
251–260 of 385 posts
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the single biggest environmentally-unfriendly move Apple made is not allowing user serviceability. Even a simple ability to swap your phone's battery for a new one would reduce a lot of emissions. But they want you to spend $$$ on new stuff, so they make it hard for you to fix. And on laptops, soldered SSDs, soldered RAM, non-swappable batteries. You HAVE to buy a new PC even if you just want a little more hard d…
Replacing battery in iPhone is very easy. It's stupid to replace the entire phone because of battery. iPhone is a good citizen in that regard. You can either do it yourself or ask any repair shop.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol at your false dichotomy with bitcoin. Bitcoin mining uses a mind-boggling amount of power, and we don't get anything useful for all those emissions. I agree that we're quick to look at other people's small wastes with condescension, but bitcoin is not a small waste.
Yup. Also, the shape of the growth curve matters. It's superlinear with the number of participants, and even with no new participants, the amount of waste grows over time by design . If an evil overlord wanted to exacerbate our climate and energy problems, pushing Bitcoin to mainstream use is probably the ideal way to do it.
Here's my reasoning. Miners spend electricity. They're getting block rewards and fee rewards, they'll exchange earned bitcoins to dollars and pay their bills. So ultimately energy spent per block = (block reward + fee reward) x bitcoin price.
Right now block reward is 6.25 BTC. Last block fee reward was 2.13 BTC. Block reward will go down as time goes on.
I don't really understand economics of fee rewards and whether they'll grow over time linearly or exponentially. I checked historical data and it does not seem to grow at all. So I'll suppose that reward fee will not grow.
So in the end you'll have block reward of 10-20 BTC. That's all you have to pay your electricity bills after you mined block. So basically energy spent per block is directly correlated to bitcoin price, and that's about it.
Obviously bitcoin price won't grow to the moon and its price is limited by some economical factors.
So while bitcoin network might draw non-negligible amount of electricity, it still is limited by design.
Now if miners will decide to change bitcoin design, for example to increase block size, that's another matter. But it's not clear if that would happen.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replacing battery in iPhone is very easy. It's stupid to replace the entire phone because of battery. iPhone is a good citizen in that regard. You can either do it yourself or ask any repair shop.
It’s absolutetly not very easy. I would say it’s very hard, indeed it requires a set of specialized tools.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replacing battery in iPhone is very easy. It's stupid to replace the entire phone because of battery. iPhone is a good citizen in that regard. You can either do it yourself or ask any repair shop.
It’s absolutetly not very easy. I would say it’s very hard, indeed it requires a set of specialized tools.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
USB-C depending on implementation has enormously greater throughput (USB 3.1 gen 2 is 10Gbps) than lightning (480Mbps/60MBps). This might not be relevant for your needs, but increasingly Apple are marketing the iPhone as a 'pro' device, specifically for media creation. And it is finding a home in videography and event photography and streaming for example (I work in this area). Given this, the speed available through…
The lightning port does support USB 3 speeds, the old iPad Pro (pre-USB C) models supported USB 3 over the lightning connector and Apple even released some adapters that took advantage of the speed: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0W2AM/A/lightning-to-us... But for some reason Apple has never brought this support to the iPhone's lightning port.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
USB-C would have been the true environmentally friendly move
Throwing away a billion devices worth of accessories isn't the environmentally friendly move. I'm always confused how people talk themselves into believing this. It is obviously not the case.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless Apple decides to ditch the port entirely in the near future, your argument doesn't make sense. Sure, there will be some minor pain during the transition, but the world did not end when Apple transitioned from the 30-pin to Lighting transition, nor did it end when phone manufacturers transitioned from micro-USB to USB-C. You can use USB-C to lightning adapter, like how they have 30-pin to lightning adapter earl…
Does no one remember the uproar when Apple first introduced Lightning? Everyone I talked to hated that their old 30-pin connector cables wouldn’t work anymore. With how much more popular the iPhone is now compared to over half a decade ago, it’d be even worse.
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#259I really hate arguments about how much electricity wireless phone charging wastes because it makes people feel like they’re doing something when in fact they aren’t. Charging a cell phone every day for a year consumes about 1-2 kWh per phone. The average American household consumes 10,399 kWh per year, meaning that a typical smart phone consumes one 5000th, (0.02%) of a typical home’s electricity (excl. natural gas)…
I do notice a certain glee we have when we can frame other people wasting energy in ways we don't happen to waste ourselves. As if wireless phone charging or bitcoin mining or X are the last unturned stones in the pursuit of zero waste. Some condescension we can share on HN before we drive to Walmart for a single gallon of milk. It's weird how tempting it is. I had a roommate that used our clothes dryer daily. I have…
Re: A Guy Walks into an Apple Store
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do notice a certain glee we have when we can frame other people wasting energy in ways we don't happen to waste ourselves. As if wireless phone charging or bitcoin mining or X are the last unturned stones in the pursuit of zero waste. Some condescension we can share on HN before we drive to Walmart for a single gallon of milk. It's weird how tempting it is. I had a roommate that used our clothes dryer daily. I have…
> As if wireless phone charging or bitcoin mining Love the bitcoin submarine. lol. To add something informative to the conversation ... The reason that the big bitcoin farmers are located in China is that the power generation model is different in China than the West. China is controlled by about 8 Dragon Families in concert with the CCP (you'll notice that in news stories the prominent actors all descended from Maoi…
She only thinks she's somebody.
No one knows who the fuck she is outside of China.