EFF doesn't have >$100Bn of profits per year.

When you're a donation based non-profit, it's easy to "stand up for clear boundaries". In fact, it's literally your purpose.

When you've got >$100Bn of profits on the line, it's a little harder - and you have a different purpose (i.e. to make money).

I don’t think it was particularly easy for Phil Zimmerman, random computer programmer who built something but could also go work for MSFT instead, to standup to big time jail Arms Export laws over his something he built.

So you're saying that microsoft has more money to work with? Everything I know about the legal system shows that the more money you have, the easier it is to get your way.

Their way is to make money - not to fight for political issues.

What grounds would there be to fight? I don't think GitHub has any standing to fight the sanctions themselves. And if an entity is sanctioned all US persons and companies must stop providing them services. Hosting a git repo for them certainly counts as a service, doesn't it?

Perhaps there is some grey area as to what qualifies as a service being provided to that entity. Is my fork still a service being provided to them? Or is it a service being provided to me? But that is still something useful to the sanctioned entity, so am I now providing them a service? In which case GitHub is still a party to providing them a service.

> One can end up looking like the EFF with a long term, very strong reputation of standing up for clear boundaries of what’s right in the legal<>code context and go to court over it, or you can end up looking like GitHub.

There's a massive difference between "nope, I won't comply with the law" and "I think this law is a bad idea, let's go to the courts to see if we can do something about it". And GitHub has done the last, too, to restore access to Iranian developers for example.

Honestly, I don’t care what happens to crypto bros. They put profit before environment. Fuck em.

This type of opinion is so sad to see, especially here on HN that tends to be relatively level-headed.

I don't agree with a lot of things in the world, but the only thing I wish for them is for things to get better, not worse.

If you look at his submissions and comment history, I don't worry so much, it's all hyper partisan politically influenced hot takes.

The funny part is he's contributing to the problem, as in not realizing it's the working class vs the rich, not the left vs the right.

The whole point of the energy critique is that it's being wasted on something either useless or deleterious. You can argue with that take, but all you're doing with the "but what about dishwashers?!" response is asking them to pass a moral judgment on dishwashers, which isn't relevant to this discussion.

Also, Ethereum has been "soon to be env-friendly PoS" for years now. Let's revisit that if and when it actually happens.

Cryptocurrencies are our only counter yet against the abuses of the financial system by the governments. In some countries this abuse is only potential, on others - already very real.

In a country where a dictator can make you starve with a snap of the fingers, cryptocurrencies are vital to survival. So even 10x more energy 'wasted' on such an indespensable service would still be a bargain I'd take.

Protecting the wealthy from the government isn't exactly a cause many want to fight for. Using the government to reign in the wealthy is much more popular

In a country where a dictator can make you starve with the snap of the finger, what are you going to do, eat your virtual coins from your jail cell? Technology is notably not a solution to social problems

Protecting the wealthy? You have no clue about real problems of people resisting the dictatorship. Right now cryptocurrencies are the only reliable and untraceable way for Russian dissidents and underground to fund themselves. The key features are anonymousness and permission lessness, and Bitcoin/Monero can be turned into hard cash quite easily. Oh and it also allows you to receive funds from abroad with zero oversight, avoid paying taxes, etc.

If there will ever be an uprising, it'll be funded with nothing else but cryptocurrency.

So yes, cryptocurrencies are worth every watt of energy they use.

Well the merge has hit test chains so it’s coming for eth main chain.

Yes, you’re correct, the judgement is about what the energy is used for.

So I'm actually interested in these figures.

Bitcoin alone is estimated to use 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.

The US Department of Energy estimates that there are 80 million households with dishwashers in the US (although they believe 16m never use them, but we will ignore that). It appears that the average dishwasher uses 251kWh annually (at the avg of 215 cycles per year).

So this would put the US annual dishwasher power consumption to around 20 terawatt-hours. This would mean that the rest of the world would need approximately 518 million household dishwashers used 215 times a year each, to make up the rest of the power usage for just Bitcoin.

When you start factoring in the size difference in dishwashers between countries, the power usage differences between 120v and 220v in different parts of the world, the overall adoption rate of dishwashers etc... it makes it hard to believe that they could compete with crypto power usage.

518 million seems reasonable to low for the entire world and you are leaving out commercial places.

Remember, dishwashers are more efficient at using resources than washing them by hand.

Bitcoin just consumes extra energy, not makes an existing process more efficient.

A world where proof-of-work meant "prove that you cleaned your/my/someone's kitchen" would be a much better world.

> eth, which is soon to be env-friendly PoS.

The switch has been delayed 6(!) times since 2017. It‘s perpetually happening “soon”. I believe it when it’s actually live.

It’s live on testnests now so coming for main chain.

Dishwashers(especially newer ones) save energy(and definitely money if you're a restaurant) compared to handwashing though. And washing dishes is useful. Mining bitcoin arguably isn't in the sense that if bitcoin(and all other cryptocurrency) disappeared today, the world would be completely fine.

Are you seriously claiming crypto is more useful than dishwashers?

It depends on what you consider "useful". I live in the west and I don't take our financial freedom as granted. There are many places in the world where decentralized consensus for financial transactions is valued.

I'm grateful to live in a society where this is not a "problem", but I don't take it for granted

How often do angry articles hit HN ranting about Visa/MC cutting of spending to XYZ source based on moral judgments or investor pressure. Yes, free access to digital payments as an anchor of civil society beats clean dishes I don’t have to do by hand.

It’s amazing how well the media is able to reprogram the minds of the masses into mindlessly regurgitating its talking points. “Crypto bad” seems to be a big one for 2022.

In what way has 'the media' pushed crypto is bad?

Seems like every celebrity and talk show host was pushing NFT's, be it Kardasians, Kimmel, Fallon, even Bill Murray released a collection 1 month ago. Ultra stars like Tom Brady to Mark Cuban were investing and (still) talking about crypto companies they are heavily invested in. Half the superbowl ads this year were advocating for people to waste money on crypto.

There being next to nothing positive so far from cryptocurrencies for the past decade doesn't make it hard for the media to "reprogram" the minds of the masses. It's easy to convince somebody that something is bad when it's been overwhelmingly useless to negative on every single front except for speculative investment.