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Comment by saltyfamiliar | Hacker News Reader

What an irresponsible use of energy. At least mine Bitcoin...

Of all the “irresponsible” uses of energy, this is the one I endorse the most.

It's not irresponsible if the dude needed heat in his home. Far and few people realize that all electronics are heaters that happen to do computation in the process of conversion of electricity to heat. Sure, it's not convective if there aren't fans to disperse the heat.. but it's a beefed up computer so I am sure he had good PC fans.

In any case, heat that is created without convection fans to spread it quickly, will still diffuse into the home albeit at a slower pace. It has to go somewhere..

> Far and few people realize that all electronics are heaters that happen to do computation in the process of conversion of electricity to heat.

Surely anyone who's used a computer with a fan in it knows this…

That's easy to say but pretty much everyone I've talked to, albeit the few oddities, thought that dedicated space heaters were way different than X-Box getting hot, or computer getting hot. Think of the cognitive dissonance to switch to all LED bulbs in a cold climate, because you're told it's more efficient, meanwhile using electric space heaters at the same time... It happens more often than you think, given the politics.

Of course, there are some heating methods that are cheaper than electricity - like natural gas. So one would have to factor that in, along with power plant emissions vs home emissions.

It's a complex entrenchment. It'd be interesting to produce a video of street interviews just to see what the average person thinks about electronics getting hot. It would make for a good case study of the intersection between common sense/basic physics knowledge/and energy/eco politics.

Heat pumps are quite a bit more efficient than electric heaters.

... only if you're willing to cool something else ;)

Every time we clean something, we simply dirty something else. Ala Einstein, energy is neither created nor destroyed. Chaos is neither created nor destroyed, simply moved. And to move chaos, requires isotropic heat emission, which releases chaos in itself - hence entropy increasing. Thus, moving chaos, increases the total chaos a little bit. Until there's chaos everywhere and nothing can be moved, ie. heat death of the universe. Prepare for the big crunch, the big pancake deep freeze, the cyclic big bang, conformal cyclic rebirth, or whatever your cosmological spirit holds to be an inkling of inclination. :-)

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