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Headline - data centers consume massive electricity, more than whole nations; holders of google/AWS/Meta stock on centralization of compute power with self-refe

Headline - data centers consume massive electricity, more than whole nations; holders of google/AWS/Meta stock on centralization of compute power with self-referential economics -- "no big deal, move along citizen"

mattnewton 3y ago
Comparing the market segment of all data centers around the world to a single nation doesn’t make much sense to me? Not saying we shouldn’t be invested in efficiency here. It’s possible that we need regulation and the natural incentives of cost control aren’t enough. I just honestly don’t see the alarm.
jeffbee 3y ago
The majority of the energy being used according to the report is "Data transmission network energy use", chiefly mobile networks, so unless you are prepared to chuck your mobile, you can stuff it.
refactor_master 3y ago
Briefly ignoring the economic aspect of this, we have to stop using countries as reference points against the whole world. It's like when I'm told "Bad thing X happened, and affected an area the size of Belgium. A WHOLE COUNTRY". What do I do with this information? Sure, Belgium is big, but is it like, big? It turns out that it's... does the math... roughly 0.00006 times the total area of the Earth. That doesn't sound big. And if bad thing X happens every year, it would take more than 16000 years to cover the Earth, or 800 if we say 95% of the Earth is water anyway. That timeline also sounds manageable. I'm not trying to spin disaster positively, but will someone please just start using "affected area / total potential area" or something, instead of yardsticks and football fields.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  Texas is 22 times as big as Belgium. It’s not huge.
wyre 3y ago
I’m surprised (I shouldn’t be at this point) that this is the only comment here critiquing the energy usage of data centers. When I see this headline I don’t think about steaming from Netflix, I think about the troves of data Google, Mega, Microsoft, Netflix, NSA etc have gathered about us, arguably against our will. I shouldn’t be surprised that HN users would applaud this energy use in the name of value, when these same users are stockholders of the companies creating this so-called value.
Spooky23 3y ago
And suburban family of 5 probably uses more electricity than a rural African village. So what? These facilities are run by companies who obsess over reducing opex. If you want to reduce datacenter power consumption, figure out what drives on-prem compute and create financial incentives to drive that workload to cloud. More demand equals more capital invest and more efficiency.

mattnewton 3y ago

Comparing the market segment of all data centers around the world to a single nation doesn’t make much sense to me? Not saying we shouldn’t be invested in efficiency here. It’s possible that we need regulation and the natural incentives of cost control aren’t enough. I just honestly don’t see the alarm.

jeffbee 3y ago

The majority of the energy being used according to the report is "Data transmission network energy use", chiefly mobile networks, so unless you are prepared to chuck your mobile, you can stuff it.

refactor_master 3y ago

Briefly ignoring the economic aspect of this, we have to stop using countries as reference points against the whole world. It's like when I'm told "Bad thing X happened, and affected an area the size of Belgium. A WHOLE COUNTRY". What do I do with this information? Sure, Belgium is big, but is it like, big? It turns out that it's... does the math... roughly 0.00006 times the total area of the Earth. That doesn't sound big. And if bad thing X happens every year, it would take more than 16000 years to cover the Earth, or 800 if we say 95% of the Earth is water anyway. That timeline also sounds manageable. I'm not trying to spin disaster positively, but will someone please just start using "affected area / total potential area" or something, instead of yardsticks and football fields.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
Texas is 22 times as big as Belgium. It’s not huge.

wyre 3y ago

I’m surprised (I shouldn’t be at this point) that this is the only comment here critiquing the energy usage of data centers. When I see this headline I don’t think about steaming from Netflix, I think about the troves of data Google, Mega, Microsoft, Netflix, NSA etc have gathered about us, arguably against our will. I shouldn’t be surprised that HN users would applaud this energy use in the name of value, when these same users are stockholders of the companies creating this so-called value.

Spooky23 3y ago

And suburban family of 5 probably uses more electricity than a rural African village. So what? These facilities are run by companies who obsess over reducing opex. If you want to reduce datacenter power consumption, figure out what drives on-prem compute and create financial incentives to drive that workload to cloud. More demand equals more capital invest and more efficiency.