121–130 of 177 posts
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My favourite benefit of Bitcoin is bypassing the hideously inefficient and corrupt Wall Street financial vampiric system that provided the world with the Global Financial Crisis for which it suffered the punishment of being given billions of dollars by the US Government. Each to their own I guess.
yeah im sure accelerating the planet turning into an uninhabitable wasteland is really worth it just to stick it to the man, you fucking troglodyte
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yeah im sure accelerating the planet turning into an uninhabitable wasteland is really worth it just to stick it to the man, you fucking troglodyte
Please get some perspective. Read more actual facts and data from various different angles, you've obviously dived deep into one side with little consideration for any other. You give me the kind opportunity to quote a favourite lyric of mine: The do-er and the thinker: no allowance for the other Thick as a Brick, Jethro Tull[0] [0]: http://www.collecting-tull.com/Albums/Lyrics/ThickAsABrick.h...
im sure thats FAR more efficient than banks, right?
i hate banks as much as the next guy but good fucking lord is bitcoin terrible
Completely pales next to something as egregious as disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods. They will still be washing up on beaches 100 years after every single person involved in their design has passed. Whole electronics industry needs to take this stuff more seriously, we need more replaceable batteries and storage, right to repair on a global level and laws…
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We just need to align incentives. If externalities were factored into the cost of imported fruits for example, it wouldn't even be a problem. As it stands do you even know what the relative carbon cost of growing or importing an apple vs a watermelon is in your area? Do you know how to tell if a fruit is grown locally or not while standing at the supermarket? Do you think the average person can reasonably be expected…
Some things yes, some things no. I suspect many people realize there are no local producers for a lot of things (I don't think North Dakota has a lot of Coconut production), and seasonality is also important (not a lot of apples are grown in January in New York). But even when it's obvious, people still make choices. Including externalities would be an interesting path. I don't know what that would realistically look…
Just the effect of making less green options more expensive would help, but of course this would be even better if the money collected from such a tax was used to invest in green infrastructure which could balance the original pollution.
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Of course. The example wasnt about AirPods but the whole catalogue of consumer electronics bought every year, for sole reason of owning newer version as a social status. Iphones pods pads etc etc.
I get value from using my AirPods while they last. They make my life better. Cryptocurrencies? Great if you got in at the top of the ponzi, but otherwise not.
Listening to music in strict Islam is considered hurtful and sin. To some people listening to music is as worthless as crypto, or maybe even worse.
Stop whining about crypto being a ponzi scheme. Instead of parroting same points over and over read what ponzi scheme actually is.
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For dedicated ASICs: It's still working, but the hardware can only perform the SHA-256 hash algorithm crazy fast, that's it. > it would be better to use a new POW algorithm, which does not benefit from single purpose ASICs. It's hard for me to imagine what that would be but that could be a lack of imagination on my part. Maybe other non-payment blockchain applications? The other day some friends and I were musing how…
Monero uses RandomX as its hash algorithm, which is based on random code excecution and optimised for CPUs. https://github.com/tevador/RandomX
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Of course. The example wasnt about AirPods but the whole catalogue of consumer electronics bought every year, for sole reason of owning newer version as a social status. Iphones pods pads etc etc.
I have an old refurbished iPhone SE, and my AirPods don’t have long battery life but it’s still usable years later and third parties will put in a new battery. Lots of people use Apple products because they have a long life, not everyone is jumping to the latest and greatest.
You are picking ridiculous point and creating some ridiculous 'true Scotsman'
>Lots of people use Apple products because they have a long life
Like who? You and other 10 people?
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I think we need a way better (re)use of the heat generated by the hardware instead cooling it or placing the hardware in cool places.
There was a startup somewhere trying to sell Bitcoin miners as home heating units in cold climates, but the economics don't work since the chips are too expensive and gas is also still too much less expensive than electricity to heat with. Most industrial processes require heat beyond what a mining chip could handle... unless you fabricated special mining chips out of different semiconductor materials that can handle…
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Can the bitcoin ecosystem replace the dollar ecosystem? Because if not then what's the point?
The cryptocurrency ecosystem can whilst Bitcoin, alone, definitely cannot (at least in it's current iteration).
Completely pales next to something as egregious as disposable tech that sells in the millions and only has a lifespan of 2 years tops like AirPods. They will still be washing up on beaches 100 years after every single person involved in their design has passed. Whole electronics industry needs to take this stuff more seriously, we need more replaceable batteries and storage, right to repair on a global level and laws…
I've never understood why people complain so much about the environmental impact of AirPods. I mean it would be great if they were rechargeable and recyclable etc - but they weigh 4g - about 1/50 of a pair of headphones. If the average person uses them for 2 years they'll be a drop in the ocean to the tens or hundreds of kilos of plastic and other objects they don't recycle fully in that time.
> Analysts estimate Apple sold between 14 million and 16 million AirPods in 2017.[38] In 2018, AirPods were Apple's most popular accessory product, with 35 million units sold.[39][40] 60 million units were sold in 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods
In 2020, another 114 million units were sold.
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/
Each airpod weights about 4g. But we're counting sales. So, we're counting pairs. And we also have to factor in the plastic charging case which comes in at 38g since that's also included in the package as well. That makes for a grand total of 46g per sale.
By my count, the total weight of all airpods ever sold is about 10.350 metric tonnes (46g * 225 million units).
According to the Ocean Cleanup project, the Great Pacific Garbage Page weighs about 88.000 tonnes.
https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/ Also seems to be confirmed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w
So, all airpods sold between 2017 and end of 2020 make up about... 11.7% of the Great Pacific Garabage Patch.
That's not a number I'd call "negligible". I'm a bit floored and incredulous and not even all too sure of my number work to the point where I've been re-calculating for the past 20 minutes and I'm arriving at the same numbers again and again.
That's just the amount of waste that will need to be disposed of when all units have reached their end of life.
There's also the production process itself which requires resources and produces waste as well. That's not just the molding of plastics and the assembly of circuits. I'm also talking about the extraction, refining,... of natural resources just to produce the half-finished parts that arrive at the plant where the final product is assembled. There's the logistics and transports involved just to move the entire chain. Oh, and the number juggling above is also discounting packaging and wrapping. There's a massive hidden footprint there as well.