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by onion2k 1789 days ago
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27954946

The top comment explains why this is probably a good thing.

4 comments

And the response explains why that comment is wrong:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27957381

The response cites a table showing that desktop PCs sold after 2021-07-01 must consume no more than 75 kilowatt hours per year (base rate, with adders allowed for some features). 75 kWh/year is only 8.6 watts of continuous power draw. Even a basic budget desktop will drastically exceed 8.6 W if it's on continuously with significant load, like running folding@home. Since practically every desktop computer can draw more than 8.6 watts and sales of only a few computer models are restricted, I conclude that the restrictions are not about power consumption in the fully active state.
The exact math was off, but high end gaming PCs are still not being banned.
The important dispute isn't about the calculations, but whether the limits only apply to sleep mode (as claimed by the first comment) or also to yearly maximum power consumption (and thus to power consumption during active use).
If they applied to active use it would effectively outlaw computers entirely. That interpretation doesn't make sense.

There's some uncertainty with various forms of idle and sleep but that's a much smaller worry.

Although the top comments TO that top comment seem to be explaining that the top comment is wrong, and it's probably a bad thing.

...I feel like this topic is oddly confusing.

This is HackerNews. Either the top comment will support TFA and replies will refute the top comment, or the top comment will refute TFA. I can't think of a major story where that wasn't the case. That's kinda the shtick here.
Not just the top comments. Replies that agree are fairly rare here in general.

Personally I think that's good. Replies that agree rarely add new information, but they drown out other more informative comments and can create an echo chamber.

Exactly true. It’s the fact that people think top comment means something is more accurate when all it means is it was most voted. That’s like saying Trump is always right because he got the most votes in 2016. Every website is the same, likes or upvotes are literally a popularity contest and what is popular, usually the first couple comments and the comment that mostly closely meets already widely held expectations. Anyone who is an expert or knowledgeable in any field can attest that often, but not always, the top comment on a topic is wrong and the best comment sits 4 replies deep with almost no upvotes.
Sounds like gun laws. As long as the grip on the gun is shaped in a certain way, it's no longer an illegal assault rifle.
You mean "assault weapon". The laws invent the category of "assault weapon" and then define it arbitrarily to ban it. "assault rifle" is something completely different and actually has a definition, but is also something that's illegal for sale anywhere in the US (if newly produced). Assault rifles are defined by having selective fire between semi-auto and fully-automatic. (These weapons are still sold in the US, but only old weapons grandfathered in, and require special permitting to own.)

For more see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

Considering many assault weapons are rifles and many assault rifles are assault weapons, please excuse my imprecise language.
You make it sound like the guns are using loopholes, but it's more that a lot of these bans are against a bunch of random miscellaneous attributes of the gun and don't make sense to begin with.
Why the downvotes? I bet they can ship the PSU separately and mark the PC as "for-parts" to get around this ban.
If you didn't read the discussion, that is the impression, yes.