For many years, the cheapest source of electricity has been investing in improving energy efficiency -- simply the idea of doing more of what we want with less electricity.
But truly, the cheapest source of electricity is not spending electricity on things we shouldn't be doing at ALL, like cryptocurrency mining.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/bitcoin-crypto-electricity-consumption
@petergleick
If the proof of work was even useful somehow like solving astrophysics equations it might make slightly more sense, but no, proof of completely useless work.
@SETSystems @petergleick Yes, completely useless. An utter waste of resources thanks to human silliness.
@shuttersparks @SETSystems @petergleick
If you are interested, there's Gridcoin, a virtual currency that rewards computing performed on the BOINC network in fields such as medicine, physics, climatology, etc. (sadly, after 10 years, it's still a niche project)
@me99 @SETSystems @petergleick Not really. I've participated in BOINC since the beginning of SETI-at-Home, before there was BOINC. BOINC consumes at least as much energy as any other supercomputer for a given amount of computing.
15 years and longer ago there might have been some saving because the idea was to use CPU time that was wasted on screen savers. But modern computers have low-power sleep modes so there's little wasted CPU time and nobody uses screen savers because CRTs are gone.
@shuttersparks @SETSystems @petergleick
BOINC probably consumes more energy than a supercomputer, being less efficient. But my point wasn't that BOINC (/Gridcoin) doesn't consume energy, but that it doesn't represent an 'utter waste of resources' like Bitcoin does.
@me99 @SETSystems @petergleick I hear you but disagree. Those resources could be used for something else that is demonstrably productive.
On the other hand, one could argue that cryptocurrency is a worthy pursuit. And it might be if structured right. That's a topic for a whole book. Hahaha. ;-)
