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by undersuit 3039 days ago
I'm more concerned that it takes something "wasteful" like mining to make people wake up. What about DRM techniques like HDCP? Even with hardware acceleration we've been wasting power for at least a decade to encrypt every single video stream so that we can stop piracy. Piracy still exists. Mining most definitely uses more power than video encryption but only one of them has really produced anything of value.
3 comments
nradov 3039 days ago
Can you quantify the energy wasted on HDCP? My understanding is that it's typically handled by efficient custom circuits.
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undersuit 3039 days ago
Efficient? Maybe, you can still have inefficient hardware. The hardware dedicated to HDCP encryption is single purpose, just like a Bitcoin miner. I'd expect the Bitcoin hardware is far more tuned for efficiency than most hardware HDCP circuits since power usage is the major cost of owning a miner in the longterm.

I'm not aware of any actual metrics and like I originally said I'm pretty sure bitcoin mining still uses more energy.

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umanwizard 3039 days ago
What of value has bitcoin mining (or for that matter, anything relating to bitcoin) produced?

DRM makes it harder to pirate, which is something of value in my opinion.

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wz1000 3039 days ago
If bitcoin has zero value, DRM has negative value.

DRM doesn't make it harder to pirate. DRM makes it infinitely more attractive to pirate.

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aianus 3039 days ago
Bitcoin (well, its descendants now) makes my international money transfers dirt cheap while DRM prevents me from using media that I paid for on my favorite devices.
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undersuit 3039 days ago
I think it's highly disingenuous to feign that bitcoin has no value.
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goldenkey 3039 days ago
The encryption doubles as compression. Its not wasting power..
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undersuit 3039 days ago
No, the HDMI and HDCP specs support encryption and compression on video streams. Encryption is not compression.
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goldenkey 3039 days ago
Actually, most encryption includes compression. Google it.
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Nursie 3039 days ago
No, it doesn't. If anything, with the use of padding schemes, IVs and MACs, most encryption schemes make the data grow a little.
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undersuit 3039 days ago
I don't mean to be snippy, but could you instead just give me proof of your claims?
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