Author: Rahul

It seems to me that the most aggressive use of renewable energy is actually is going to be to mine cryptocurrency.

The author of this twitter thread cites a number of sources to show that renewables account for ~78% of the energy used to mine bitcoin:

I hadn’t thought about this, has anyone looked into the energy consumption that goes into Fiats vs just assuming it is zero cuz we don’t track it? https://t.co/ztVXWsLTil

— Jason Jacobs (@jjacobs22) February 19, 2021

As this article in an oil-industry-focused website says,

Gazpromneft recently began a cryptocurrency mining operation based in one of its Siberian oil drilling sites, “unlocking the power of Russia’s oil and gas resources for the needs of bitcoin mining”… Instead of paying a premium to use energy from the grid, locating the cryptocurrency mining on-site at an oil field means that a steady supply of natural gas is virtually free.

Also, generation of renewable energy is independent of demand: the sun shines regardless of whether there is demand or not. Similarly, there will be unusually windy days or stormy seas.

Now, humanity hasn’t yet cracked the problem of large-scale energy storage as of 2021. Which means at times when energy from renewable sources outstrips demand, energy is simply ‘wasted’.

People quickly figured that mining cryptocurrency is an excellent way to harness that excess energy. Indeed, as the well-argued shareholder letter of the new Norwegian crypto investment company Seetee says, [PDF]

Seetee will establish mining operations that transfer stranded or intermittent electricity without stable demand locally—wind, solar, hydro power— to economic assets that can be used anywhere. Bitcoin is, in our eyes, a load-balancing economic battery, and batteries are essential to the energy transition required to reach the targets of the Paris Agreement. Our ambition is to be a valuable partner in new renewable projects.

(Part 1 – what I mean by sustainable accessories)

From yesterday’s post,

Three, it needs to be long-lasting. Specifically, I’m not a fan of accessories that need proprietary software to work… need to connect to the internet to work… have built-in batteries in them.

It’s this constraint (can you really call it that?) that leaves no good options today.

• Mice with proprietary bluetooth dongles don’t always work with the iPad. And it’s not clear which ones support multitouch at all, and even when they do, which multitouch gestures
• Apple’s own second-generation Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, which – unlike the first-generation ones – support multitouch, have a built-in battery, and as this iFixit teardown shows, it’s really not easy to get to it, leave alone replace it.

That leaves my ancient (by computing standards) IBM optical mouse from 2005.

This is from before IBM sold its consumer hardware division (including Thinkpads)to Lenovo.

The mouse plugs into an external powered USB hub that itself connects to the iPad via the USB-A port of the multi-port dongle. This way the mouse doesn’t draw power from the iPad.

The mouse has no power source or battery. It is wired and needs no software to work. Its LED will be one of the last components to fail – one of the buttons or the scroll wheel will likely go first.

Now it doesn’t support multitouch per se, but I can simulate swipe up and down with the scroll wheel, and swipe left and right with shift + scroll. And I can manipulate split view with the grab-bars on the top of the left and right windows, resize with the vertical grab-bar. Along with left and right click, it’s brought down the need to use the touchscreen down to a minimum.

But it’s still nowhere close to the slick multitouch experience of the first-generation Magic Trackpad on Mac OS, or the iPad’s touchscreen itself.

End note: It’s unfortunate that more manufacturers – and Apple in particular – don’t make either wired versions of their products or wireless versions with replaceable batteries. Most computer accessories don’t need to be any thinner or lighter. They do, however, need to last much longer than they do today. With Apple’s build quality, its accessories should last a couple of decades at least. It’s too bad the battery is the limiting factor.

(ends)