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* Excessively energy-consuming software considered malware?
@ 2022-02-20 10:05 Maxime Devos
  2022-02-20 10:48 ` Tobias Platen
                   ` (6 more replies)
  0 siblings, 7 replies; 59+ messages in thread
From: Maxime Devos @ 2022-02-20 10:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: guix-devel

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[CC'ing some people in Guix I know to be interested in cryptocurrency]

Hi,

Guix packages some cryptocurrency(*) software (bitcoin, monero, some
people have been working on packaging ethereum).  So far, it only
appeared that clients are being packaged.

More recently, a ‘miner’ for monero has been packaged
(https://issues.guix.gnu.org/54068).  At least for bitcoin, mining is
known to consume an absurd amount of energy (the footprint of a whole
country, and 1 Bitcoin transaction is said to be equivalent to 735121
Visa transactions)[1].

Guix has a policy against including malware[citation needed 2], and
furthering global warming[3] (and energy prices[4], if [3] is not bad
enough for you) seems rather bad behaviour to me.

Would these miners be considered malware in Guix?

TBC I'm not making a case for rejecting all inefficient software, only
software that is absurdly inefficient by design -- a, say, math library
not using vectorised operations might be quite a bit less inefficient
than a math library using vectorised operations, but that can be
resolved with some programming work and it would seem to pale in
contrast to the mining situation.

Greetings,
Maxime.

(*) For this e-mail, I'm only considering cryptocurrencies based on
some ‘mining’ system and assuming that monero and ethereum have the
same energy problems as Bitcoin, although possibly with a smaller
constant factor.

[1]: See, e.g.,
https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/2021/03/09/business/dealbook/bitcoin-climate-change.html
/
https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/2021/03/09/business/dealbook/bitcoin-climate-change.html

[2]: zero hits when searching for "malware" in the manual!

[3]: I'm sure you can find some sources about destabilising climate
systems, species extinctions, fish getting third-degree burns, island
nations gradually disappearing because of raising sea levels ...

[3]: I'm not sure actually that mining would be (partially) responsible
for increasing energy prices but it seems plausible to me.

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 59+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-05-31 10:34 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 59+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-02-20 10:05 Excessively energy-consuming software considered malware? Maxime Devos
2022-02-20 10:48 ` Tobias Platen
2022-02-20 11:13   ` Martin Becze
2022-02-20 16:52     ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-20 20:39       ` Martin Becze
2022-02-24  9:23         ` Hartmut Goebel
2022-02-24 11:18           ` Martin Becze
2022-02-25  0:27             ` Christine Lemmer-Webber
2022-02-25 12:41               ` Bengt Richter
2022-02-25 13:04                 ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-02-25 16:14                   ` Bengt Richter
2022-02-25 16:32                     ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-25 16:49                     ` Paul Jewell
2022-02-25 17:05                 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-25 17:35                   ` Taylan Kammer
2022-02-25 19:00                     ` Leo Famulari
2022-04-04  8:00           ` Attila Lendvai
2022-04-04  9:43             ` Maxime Devos
2022-04-04 10:15             ` Maxime Devos
2022-04-04 12:49               ` Attila Lendvai
2022-04-04 10:16             ` Maxime Devos
2022-04-04 10:37             ` Maxime Devos
2022-04-04 11:22             ` indieterminacy
2022-04-04 18:39             ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-02-24  9:13       ` Hartmut Goebel
2022-02-24  9:36         ` Attila Lendvai
2022-02-20 11:08 ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2022-02-20 11:27   ` Compiling blender Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-20 11:34     ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2022-02-20 12:19       ` Faster "guix pull" by incremental compilation and non-circular modules? Maxime Devos
2022-02-20 16:47         ` Philip McGrath
2022-02-20 17:47           ` Semantics of circular imports Maxime Devos
2022-03-27 14:12             ` Philip McGrath
2022-03-27 14:19               ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-27 14:24               ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-27 14:33               ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-27 14:55               ` Maxime Devos
2022-03-28  4:24               ` Zhu Zihao
2022-03-30  4:50                 ` Maxim Cournoyer
2022-02-28 13:17         ` Faster "guix pull" by incremental compilation and non-circular modules? Ludovic Courtès
2022-02-28 18:50           ` Maxime Devos
2022-05-31  4:54             ` Gábor Boskovits
2022-05-31  8:49               ` Maxime Devos
2022-05-31 10:23                 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-20 15:54       ` Compiling blender Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-20 16:14         ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2022-02-20 12:20 ` Excessively energy-consuming software considered malware? Taylan Kammer
2022-02-20 12:37   ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-20 12:44     ` Taylan Kammer
2022-02-20 14:59       ` Philip McGrath
2022-02-20 18:53   ` Christine Lemmer-Webber
2022-02-20 20:34   ` Jonathan McHugh
2022-02-20 12:32 ` Paul Jewell
2022-02-20 18:26 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-02-20 19:36 ` Ryan Sundberg
2022-02-21  9:29 ` Attila Lendvai
2022-02-21 13:06   ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-21 18:56     ` raingloom
2022-02-21 23:02     ` Attila Lendvai

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