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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

All the smart engineers must have left to do AI stuff. The new windows 11 "power savings" settings menu has this gamification angle. It tells you that you've enabled "5 of 7 power saving settings" or whatever, in a way that implies the goal is to get all 7. It triggers my OCD every time I see the screen and it implies that quest is unfinished.

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Performative environmentalism, standard operating procedure for every big company. Shift the blame onto the consumer, make them feel guilty because they set their screen timeout to to more than 5 minutes. Gamification is a great tool for making people feel pressured and guilty but with plausible deniability for the company.

Meanwhile, build database centers at incredible scale to run AI and force it into those same consumers in every way possible, but never tell them how much power that wastes.

> Meanwhile, build database centers at incredible scale to run AI and force it into those same consumers in every way possible, but never tell them how much power that wastes.

Why would they? Those expenditures and investments are already priced in, and that blood is coming from that stone one way or the other or it won't, damn the expense.

Shame, on the other hand, is a renewable resource!

Coin mining and AI database centers consumer huge amounts of power. I’m not really exited about either. Both enterprises seems like scams to centralize wealth and power to a few actors.

Then switch all the settings so it says "0 of 7 power saving settings". That way the quest isn't even started. I'd do that.

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