7 ms·
This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. I was expecting at least an order of magnitude more. The headline particularly seems weird given
by ctoth 3y ago
This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. I was expecting at least an order of magnitude more.
The headline particularly seems weird given the actual numbers. Lots of things take 2% of power, why not target them?
- felixmeziere 3y agoAn order of magnitude more would be comparable to electricity consumption by households. Its utility feels to me at least an order of magnitude higher than the one of data centers, as sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances are much lower in the Maslow pyramid!
- solveit 3y agoThese days, sheltering, cleanliness and everyday appliances kinda depend on data centres.
- felixmeziere 3y agoBut they didn’t 30 years ago and we were all doing well. Data centers are not required for them.
- vineyardmike 3y ago30ys ago my mother spent an hour a day vacuuming the house. Now she has an internet connected robot, and spends an hour once a week. She’s doing better than she was 30y ago, even if she didn’t think she was doing bad 30y ago.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vel0city 3y agoTBF that robo vacuum didn't need a datacenter to function. I had a Neato Botvac from pre-connected models that worked fine until the laser turret failed and I haven't been able to get around to repairing it yet. Roombas were around for like a decade before they started getting connected.
- euazOn 3y agoFun fact: the Maslow pyramid is surrounded by a bunch of myths, such as the fact that it most likely wasn’t even created by Maslow. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/who-created-maslows-iconic-pyramid/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/who-cre...
- wyre 3y agoMaslow came up with the idea for a pyramid. The visualization for the pyramid was created by someone working in advertising, iirc.
- euazOn 3y agoMaslow came up with the general idea, which was different than the pyramid we know today. He never came up with the idea for a pyramid.
- llbeansandrice 3y agoFunnily enough I’ve really only heard it referred to as “Maslow’s hierarchy” and not a pyramid specifically until this thread. Which appears to be proper accreditation.
- codetrotter 3y agoIn Norway I have often heard it referred to as “Maslows behovspyramide”, which translates to “Maslow's Pyramid of Needs.” Indeed, even one of the greatest encyclopaedias in Norway mentions “Maslows behovspyramide” in their article about Maslow. https://snl.no/Abraham_Maslow https://snl.no/Abraham_Maslow (article is in Norwegian.)
- ctoth 3y agoSure, housing takes ~20%. But while you are sitting in your nicely electrified house, watching Netflix, You're still using that datacenter's power. All the people in all their nice electrified houses are looking for electrified entertainment served from datacenters, along with all the remarkable shit computers get used for. So it's not that housing isn't more important, it's that computing does so much with so little already.
- jeffbee 3y agoSomething like 99.44% of all the energy used in the Netflix system is used by your TV.
- paulddraper 3y agoWow, sorry guys my bad. I'll turn my TV off. Good day!
- pard68 3y agoHonestly, turning your TV is for your own best.
- irrational 3y agoYou seem to be missing some words. I’m guessing you meant to say “turning your TV off is for your own best interest”?
- commonlisp94 3y ago
- Redemo 3y agoLots of internet use reduces CO2. Like doing your accounting with your bank. Or learning how much is that? And fixing DC power use is easy I comparisons. Alone google s 24/7 renewable plan puts a lot of pressure on the industry
- 8note 3y agoIs it though? Lots of what data centers do is around organizing people so that they have jobs that get them housing and food and so on At least for the rich westerners, that data center is quite essential for the household electricity consumption
- jl6 3y agoLots of things take 2% and that’s the problem - you can keep breaking down consumption into finer and finer categories, to find that all those fine categories each only take a small percentage of the total. The problem is everything, all together. All the 2%s each need to take action in their own way.
- jeffbee 3y agoThis is the opposite, though. In order to cobble together a number that seems even remotely problematic they had to combine several things that are weakly related: all IT workloads, plus all wireless networks. They also needed to express it in terms of global electricity, instead of global primary energy, because it is absolutely dwarfed by fuel burned for transport. Finally, this is a consumer that can be trivially decarbonized. Compare private passenger cars which are ~12% of global CO2 and there are no practical ways to decarbonize that.
- gmerc 3y agoYa, nobody has figured out public transport. it’s a myth
- quickthrower2 3y agoHow do you decarbonize IT workloads in a trivial way?
- aziaziazi 3y agoBy reducing the workload, eg. using lower resolution video
- jeffbee 3y agoAnything that is already purely electric is trivial to switch to non-fossil energy.
- quickthrower2 3y agoIf it is trivial, why are we still using coal and gas to power electricity grids?
- leptons 3y agoAll the computers that we use to access data in those data centers likely consume far more power than the data centers themselves.
- sadhorse 3y agoUtility? Imagine all we could achieve with the time wasted daily on social media globally.
- jncfhnb 3y agoThis sentence only makes sense if you believe data centers are exclusively used for social media.
- jedberg 3y agoSocial media provides me with entertainment and connection to family and friends. It's not all wasted time.
- sadhorse 3y agoFrom your bio I can guarantee you that you do not represent the average social media dweller. Not even close. And you know it.
- jedberg 3y agoI'm not sure what my bio has to do with the value I get from social media.
- brightlancer 3y agoHow are you describing "average"? The vast majority of folks on social media are lurkers; the median hours of use is well below the mean.
- ilyt 3y agoWell, looking at pre-social media days not all that much useful.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Utility? Imagine all we could achieve with the time wasted daily on social media globally. Okay, let's do; if you hadn't posted this comment (on HN, a social media platform), what would you have done with the time?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"Lots of things take 2% of power, why not target them?" Perhaps because those things are not increasing at the same rate and are not projected to exceed 2% in the near term. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...
- anonylizard 3y agoLLMs will radically accelerate power consumption growth, given the extreme processing power they require compared to traditional apps. It'll probably go to 10% in 2 decades if unchecked. The IEA analysis is completely outdated because it was made pre ChatGPT (As evidenced by the many references to crypto, which is no longer relevant). Granted, its very easy to boost power efficiency in data centers, given the high margins and low pollution, so the industry is putting huge efforts into restraining power consumption in data centers.
- BeetleB 3y ago> This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. Having lived much of my life without an Internet connection, I wouldn't overvalue the utility, either. My life is better, but not that much better today.