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Datacenters use energy and computer resources more efficiently than a machine at home, unless the machine at home is already running some other tasks that you c

• southerntofu 5y ago
  > Datacenters use energy and computer resources more efficiently That is both true and misleading. Once the datacenter and all surrounding infrastructure (optic fibers, fuel pit, dedicated electricity lines, cooling equipment) and all server/networking hardware has been built, then you start having a better efficiency. If the whole cycle is taken into account, there's no way VPS can be as "green" as selfhosting. A computer will usually take more energy to build than it will consume over its entire lifetime, so repurposing an existing machine is a good way to go (if you consider minerals-related pollution, even more so). Also, when you're in a datacenter, servers will be changed every few years. For something as simple/lightweight as email, a 20y old computer will do just fine. A datacenter will renew its entire hardware a few times in that timeframe. > A computer that's 99% idle is wasting most of the energy it consumes That is true whether it's in a datacenter or at home. But of course you can share/mutualize resources with other people in order to mitigate this.