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Comment by radres | Hacker News Reader

When people are sending money through crypto (in this case bitcoin) they bid a certain amount for their transaction to be picked up. If they are paying 50 USD per transaction and people are actually booting up machines to pick up this transaction I believe I do not have anything to say to the business going between these two people.

Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them?

just feels childish and lacking logic

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> Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary?

Yes and yes? We had the "should the government regulate size of cars" discussion on here just yesterday as well.

As well as - including but not limited to - telling people to fly less, to insulate their homes to reduce heating energy use, to use lower energy bulbs, and so on and so on.

(feeling the planet warming particularly acutely today, as the arrival of Californian weather in the UK has resulted in Californian levels of wildfires near populated areas which have never experienced them before, and the largest daily number of fire brigade calls since WW2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62232654 )

> If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them?

> just feels childish and lacking logic

Not at all, actually pretty much opposite. I think it is absolutely normal adult behaviour not to help people with their non-urgent problems unless it is a cause you deeply care about. And, it is more typical not to contribute to any kind of open source or free work kind of thing.

It's the project owner's privilege to say this is OK, but that is NOT. (S)he doesn't have to justify it to anyone, even if whatever rule it is, is applied selectively.

I'm pretty sure the author will stop helping BMW if they become too annoying.

Bitcoin users can still open issues, as long as they're not bitcoin-specific.

> Are these "planet is heating" people going around telling people not to have idle appliances plugged in? Not to use bigger cars if not necessary? If BMW was using websockets in one of their huge SUVs would you not help them?

Any PoW system that is currently running right now to process, mine and settle a transaction on-chain is indeed 'burning the planet' which I agree. The thing is, not all systems are like PoW and it doesn't apply to all cryptocurrencies and Proof of Stake (PoS), hashgraphs, and mostly byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithms are not burning up the planet. There are alternatives that are useable today.

Unlike the deep learning systems continuously training their surveillance data every day that have just burned up a data centre yesterday. The tech bros don't want to hear that but will target crypto because it threatens their day to day business, especially with the author as highlighted by some commenters and even some ferocious anti-crypto supporters like the CTO of Adjoint, a private blockchain startup. [0]

They also lack any reasoning other than 'all crypto should die in a fire' which isn't going to happen. So at best, this is indeed a very childish and an extreme position to take.

[0] https://medium.com/@johny.codes/private-blockchains-even-wor...

> Not to use bigger cars if not necessary?

Yes, for god's sake, yes, what is wrong with you?

You think that the climate crisis is imaginary or will go away on its own?

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