@ariel@m.costas.dev
While we shouldn't waste energy as if it was an unlimited resource, we should be careful with performance optimization.
We should ban #blockchain technologies as soon as possible, but we should also note that #BigTech married the greenwashing thread long ago.
They can offer "green" computation on a scale by cutting from their carbon footprint the energy consumed by the connected clients (mostly browsers).
This is obviously unfair because they control such client-side computation in several ways, including by controlling the browser development, the standards and the frameworks used to build upon them (#React, #Angular and so on...).
Not to mention the actual decision of which version of the code you run on your browser, that can be "personalized"/targetted just like ads.
So ultimately they lie, as usual.
BUT arguing about performance and energy consumption might end up supporting their rhetoric.
So sure, compiled software is more efficient then interpreted one, but (first) you need to consider the whole computation, including remote client and data transfer, and (second) you need to compute the optimal balance between the pollution of the biosphere and the predation of the cybersphere.
Amazon might even (pretend to) provide the most energy efficient computation, but in the end they would use the power provided by the data collected to move goods around the world in a very polluting way.
