> “Norton is pretty much amplifying energy consumption worldwide, costing their customers more in electricity use than the customer makes on the mining, yet allowing Norton to make a ton of profit,” tweeted security researcher Chris Vickery.
Which is unlike a bike rack which if enabled/purchased but never used would be a one time loss. And for some one likely to transport bikes the bike rack would probably be beneficial.
Edit: After doing some calculations for profitability with say the RTX 3070 with a hash rate of 60.5 MH/s and a power consumption of 160 W [0] at both the min and max average US state electricity prices of .1038 $/KWh and .3428 $/KWh respectively [1] is currently profitable with a return of $2.86/day and $1.94/day respectively [2] (ignoring all other costs).
So for some this would be profitable for them with a potential reduction in the lifetime of their hardware.
0: https://www.nicehash.com/blog/post/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3070-m...!
1: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...