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GTK ported to Android — here we gooooo!
(lemmy.world)
This is very exciting. Here is the APK I downloaded. And the associated discussion.
It even already seems to support stylus input which is very exciting seeing as there has been talk of porting RNote to Android.
Everything computer does use power. The issue is the same very valid criticism of (most) crypto currencies: the design objectives are only to use power. That's the very definition of "proof of work." You usually don't care what the work is, only that it was done. An appropriate metaphor is: for "reasons", I want to know that you moved a pile of rocks from one place to another, and back again. I have some way of proving this - a video camera watching you, a proof of a factorization that I can easily verify, something - and in return, I give you something: monopoly money, or access to a web site. But moving the rocks is literally just a way I can be certain that you've burned a number of calories.
I don't even care if you go get a ~~GPU~~ tractor and move the rocks with that. You've still burned the calories, by burning oil. The rocks being moved has no value, except that I've rewarded you for burning the calories.
That's proof of work. Whether the reward is fake internet points, some invented digital currency, or access to web content, you're still being rewarded for making your CPU burn calories to calculate a result that has no intrinsic informational value in itself.
The cost is at scale. For a single person, say it's a fraction of a watt. Negligible. But for scrapers, all of those fractions add up to real electricity bill impacts. However - and this is the crux - it's always at scale, even without scrapers, because every visitor is contributing to the PoW total, global cost of that one website's use of this software. The cost isn't being noticeable by individuals, but it is being incurred; it's unavoidable, by design.
If there's no cost in the aggregate of 10,000 individual browsers performing this PoW, then it's not going to cost scrapers, either. The cost has to be significant enough to deter bots; and if it's enough to be too expensive for bots, it's equally significant for the global aggregate; it's just spread out across a lot of people.
But the electricity is still being used, and heat is still being generated, and it's yet another straw on the environmental camel's back.
It's intentionally wasteful, and a such, it's a terrible design.