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This totally misses the boat. No one is claiming a small httpd server or a minimal website is saving the earth. But it's important to start thinking about these

This totally misses the boat. No one is claiming a small httpd server or a minimal website is saving the earth. But it's important to start thinking about these things and try to do our part when possible to reduce unnecessary code. Not caring about things like these leads to modern websites using 10s or 100s of megabytes of data and considerably more cpu cycles for no real reason aside from ads, analytics, and developer friendliness, resulting in degraded performance on older laptops and mobile networks, etc. Things like optimizing and caching docker builds do make a difference at scale for organizations.

masswerk 6y ago
Also, computing is becoming a major source of energy consumption. Estimates are up to 25% of the total energy consumption by 2030. Networking takes the major share. Compare this to LED lighting, where everyone takes proud in reducing the foot print: lighting is about 2% of the total energy consumption and domestic lighting is about a third of this.
- cambalache 6y ago
  > Estimates are up to 25% of the total energy consumption by 2030. I would like to request a serious citation on that, it is an absurdly high number and 2030 is 10 years away.
  - masswerk 6y ago
    Two years ago the association of silicon manufacturers published a call to arms with an estimate of 40% in 20 years. It's difficult to find global data for the last few years, but there are several studies suggesting about 5% for data centers. Given that networking is the major source of consumption with 40+% of IT consumption, this would indicate more than 10% today. Edit: A few years ago, when Google still wasn't evil, they published an article on why Mercator projection was chosen for Google Maps. The estimated savings regarding all the global views per year were impressive!
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Sorry but that is nonsense. First of all, Electricity consumption != Energy consumption So although very important, Electricity is around 35-40% of the global emissions. https://www.vox.com/2015/3/31/8319859/electricity-vs-energy https://www.vox.com/2015/3/31/8319859/electricity-vs-energy Second, the best number right now for all the ICT sector is around 5% in electricity, which is equivalent to 2% in emissions. One single guy in a super fatalistic scenario is projecting a worst case situation for 2020 of 20% of electricity which it we assume the same distribution as today it would be equivalent to 8% of the world emissions, a 4X growth in 10 years. Even that is not going to happen. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y > Data centres contribute around 0.3% to overall carbon emissions, whereas the information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem as a whole — under a sweeping definition that encompasses personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks and televisions — accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. That puts ICT’s carbon footprint on a par with the aviation industry’s emissions from fuel. What could happen in the future is hard to forecast. But one of the most worrying models predicts that electricity use by ICT could exceed 20% of the global total by the time a child born today reaches her teens, with data centres using more than one-third of that (see ‘Energy forecast’)1. If the computationally intensive cryptocurrency Bitcoin continues to grow, a sharp rise in energy demand could come sooner rather than later
      - masswerk 6y ago
        You're right, it's about electricity consumption. However, the Nature article is from 2018, much has changed since. Also, 2% is a rather low estimate. There's very different data, as well, e.g., from a SIA/SRC report: > For this benchmark energy per bit, computing will not be sustainable by 2040, when the energy required for computing will exceed the estimated world’s energy production. Thus, radical improvement in the energy efficiency of computing is needed. https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RITR-WEB-version-FINAL.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RI... One way to tackle this is reducing the number of bits moved.
  - kasabali 6y ago
    Maybe they're also including shitcoin mining numbers in the calculation.
jchw 6y ago
>No one is claiming a small httpd server or a minimal website is saving the earth. One of the post titles referenced in the article is "This website is killing the planet." In fact, some people are actually saying exactly this, even though about 10 people went on HN to claim otherwise despite direct references to people saying it.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Since when did one person's blog post become "people are saying.."? This is like using a few tweets as evidence of popular opinion, etc.
  - jchw 6y ago
    There are multiple citations in the article... and also, I don’t think the author, in refuting an opinion that absolutely exists, is asserting that it is “popular.”
  - mwigdahl 6y ago
    Don't shift the goal posts here. You claimed "no one is", the response was to show a counterexample and say that "some people are", which is true and clearly falsifies your claim. You then stripped the "some" out -- _while quoting the response_ (!!!) and asking for more examples. Are you making a different claim now? Because the response was certainly sufficient for your original one.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      When people say "no one is" it doesn't mean literally not a single soul in the world is claiming that. Given enough people you can find multiple people who support just about any viewpoint out there. The views espoused on that blog are -extremely- fringe and not indicative of sentiment in any meaningful capacity. What value does it add to this discussion to point and go "look! at least 3 people are claiming this opinion"? It's arguing for the sake of arguing. The vast majority of people don't care about wasting computational resources, let alone care about the ecological impact of a website.

masswerk 6y ago

Also, computing is becoming a major source of energy consumption. Estimates are up to 25% of the total energy consumption by 2030. Networking takes the major share. Compare this to LED lighting, where everyone takes proud in reducing the foot print: lighting is about 2% of the total energy consumption and domestic lighting is about a third of this.

cambalache 6y ago
> Estimates are up to 25% of the total energy consumption by 2030. I would like to request a serious citation on that, it is an absurdly high number and 2030 is 10 years away.
- masswerk 6y ago
  Two years ago the association of silicon manufacturers published a call to arms with an estimate of 40% in 20 years. It's difficult to find global data for the last few years, but there are several studies suggesting about 5% for data centers. Given that networking is the major source of consumption with 40+% of IT consumption, this would indicate more than 10% today. Edit: A few years ago, when Google still wasn't evil, they published an article on why Mercator projection was chosen for Google Maps. The estimated savings regarding all the global views per year were impressive!
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Sorry but that is nonsense. First of all, Electricity consumption != Energy consumption So although very important, Electricity is around 35-40% of the global emissions. https://www.vox.com/2015/3/31/8319859/electricity-vs-energy https://www.vox.com/2015/3/31/8319859/electricity-vs-energy Second, the best number right now for all the ICT sector is around 5% in electricity, which is equivalent to 2% in emissions. One single guy in a super fatalistic scenario is projecting a worst case situation for 2020 of 20% of electricity which it we assume the same distribution as today it would be equivalent to 8% of the world emissions, a 4X growth in 10 years. Even that is not going to happen. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y > Data centres contribute around 0.3% to overall carbon emissions, whereas the information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem as a whole — under a sweeping definition that encompasses personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks and televisions — accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. That puts ICT’s carbon footprint on a par with the aviation industry’s emissions from fuel. What could happen in the future is hard to forecast. But one of the most worrying models predicts that electricity use by ICT could exceed 20% of the global total by the time a child born today reaches her teens, with data centres using more than one-third of that (see ‘Energy forecast’)1. If the computationally intensive cryptocurrency Bitcoin continues to grow, a sharp rise in energy demand could come sooner rather than later
    - masswerk 6y ago
      You're right, it's about electricity consumption. However, the Nature article is from 2018, much has changed since. Also, 2% is a rather low estimate. There's very different data, as well, e.g., from a SIA/SRC report: > For this benchmark energy per bit, computing will not be sustainable by 2040, when the energy required for computing will exceed the estimated world’s energy production. Thus, radical improvement in the energy efficiency of computing is needed. https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RITR-WEB-version-FINAL.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RI... One way to tackle this is reducing the number of bits moved.
- kasabali 6y ago
  Maybe they're also including shitcoin mining numbers in the calculation.

jchw 6y ago

>No one is claiming a small httpd server or a minimal website is saving the earth. One of the post titles referenced in the article is "This website is killing the planet." In fact, some people are actually saying exactly this, even though about 10 people went on HN to claim otherwise despite direct references to people saying it.

andrewzah 6y ago
Since when did one person's blog post become "people are saying.."? This is like using a few tweets as evidence of popular opinion, etc.
- jchw 6y ago
  There are multiple citations in the article... and also, I don’t think the author, in refuting an opinion that absolutely exists, is asserting that it is “popular.”
- mwigdahl 6y ago
  Don't shift the goal posts here. You claimed "no one is", the response was to show a counterexample and say that "some people are", which is true and clearly falsifies your claim. You then stripped the "some" out -- _while quoting the response_ (!!!) and asking for more examples. Are you making a different claim now? Because the response was certainly sufficient for your original one.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    When people say "no one is" it doesn't mean literally not a single soul in the world is claiming that. Given enough people you can find multiple people who support just about any viewpoint out there. The views espoused on that blog are -extremely- fringe and not indicative of sentiment in any meaningful capacity. What value does it add to this discussion to point and go "look! at least 3 people are claiming this opinion"? It's arguing for the sake of arguing. The vast majority of people don't care about wasting computational resources, let alone care about the ecological impact of a website.