Someone could, but then they couldn’t sell all of our activity data and farm that $$$.
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:werenotworthybow:
TY
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Supposedly duckduckgo doesn’t track or store your searches. A proper VPN and making sure you aren’t logged into anything and using private browsing should do the same for any search engine.
I would be concerned that Google still knows what you searched for and has a record of such.
I think duck duck go can do that but not positive. It’s crazy how often google searches turn up in criminal investigations. It’s right up there with buying rubber gloves, trash bags. Cleaning supplies and an ax at Walmart the day you are suspected of murder.
Imagine writing an essay about killing your husband and getting away with it but not thinking this would make you the prime suspect
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Caveat. I’m making a couple of assumptions here. I understand Ercot and how it works in Australia, but I’m not sure exactly how demand response measures like this work in Texas
It’s not exactly that Texas is paying them not to use power. And having companies willing to engage in deals like this is generally a very good thing for grids and the roll out of solar and wind.
The Bitcoin miners will sign a contract to pay X dollars per mWh of energy (probably a bit more complicated but it will do here). Say $100
During a shortage, the actual value of energy will be say $2000 (probably more) per mWh.
The Bitcoin company has a contract and can insist that it is supplied at $100, causing the supplier a loss of $1900 per mWh supplied.
The supplier and the miner make a side deal. The supplier pays the minor NOT to consume that energy. And say pays them $900 per MWH not to produce.
Miner gets 900 they wouldn’t have otherwise and the supplier makes 1000.
More broadly, these mechanisms are a really good thing because wind and solar is highly variable, and finding ways for demand to go up and down allows more renewables on the grid at a lower overall cost and higher system reliability.
Now, with that all said
Bitcoin mining as a whole is clearly stupid, parasitic and bad for the environment, and should definitely be regulated down or out, with the main issue being the overall energy usage, not this specific instance.
On top of that, you could clearly get the same outcome without paying the parasites for the benefit. Just mandate that Bitcoin power can be switched off in certain conditions.
However, and might be hard to follow. Mandating this would just make the miners pay less for their energy overall, so they would likely capture that same benefit anyway. A controllable load is much better for the supplier.
Happy to answer questions on this.