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by chroem- 1789 days ago
At a minimum, at least this is ideologically consistent with wanting to ban bitcoin, since both consume approximately the same order of magnitude of energy.
2 comments

Yes but gaming PC's are far more useful
Are they? With cryptocurrencies I can at least conduct commerce. With gaming PCs, I can... play violent videogames?
You can create an entire VFX short film with an high end pc. You can simulate fluid mechanics and invent a new revolutionary propulsion system for aircrafts with an high end Pc. You can train a NN to recognize perilous situation from webcam footage and distribute the weights freely on GitHub With a HPC. There are Miriam of things you can do with a powerful computer.

This law is stupid, a single EV recharge consumes 100x more than a HPC every single second.

Do the majority of gaming PC owners spend most of their time doing those tasks though? I think if the answer were yes, we would be discussing VFX and ML workstations, not "gaming" PCs.

If we can legislate less environmentally harmful ways of doing commerce, why can't we legislate less environmentally harmful forms of entertainment? This is simply the logical conclusion of that line of reasoning.

Workstation hardware can be used for desktop gaming and any PC can be used for workstation tasks. There's no good reason to treat them differently under the law when the specifics of how they're different are very arbitrary.
They're marketed as gaming PCs. Why shouldn't they be regulated according to their intended purpose?
Playing violent video games makes me less violent. I would imagine me being less violent could be beneficial to myself and others. Though whether violent video games do the same for others is debatable.

I would imagine kids that are exposed to violent video games at an early age may not understand it initially. It's very possible they will emulate it. But continuous exposure to it will help a smart kid understand and control it.

Shorting a market is not commerce but thanks for LARPing.
Destroying the environment to promote violence and toxic masculinity isn't entertainment.
Videogames don't promote violence or toxic masculinity in any way. It's just pixels on a screen you click buttons to. You're overthinking.
I couldn't disagree more. There are clear links between gaming violence and far right terrorism: all of the white incel mass shooters have been avid gamers. These games are practically training camps for right wing terrorists.
You can play peaceful games too.
yes, the violent video games are fun, life is also about having fun.
>after July 1, 2021, the kWh per year limit becomes 50, 60, and 75.

RTX 3080 consumes 250W when mining, so it would hit those limits in 10 days?

There are a lot more gamers than there are bitcoin miners, so it ends up balancing out:

https://www.wired.com/story/xbox-playstation-cloud-gaming-en... https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/11/video-games-...

We need to ban gaming if we want to solve the climate emergency.

That motherjones article says pc gaming consumes 75 TWh per year while just bitcoin is estimated to use 120 TWh.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952

Less than a factor of two difference is "approximately the same order of magnitude", as I originally stated.
Yes and we should also ban televisions and automobiles and espresso machines and loud music and nighttime lighting and virtual reality and air conditioning a room to below 74 degrees.