7 ms·
Sure, 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 peop
by ctoth 3y ago
Sure, 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 agoI assume you're using a screen to type this. Is there something inherently bad about videos on a screen? Or are you just unhappy with the content.
- qbasic_forever 3y agoYou definitely should, I know some folks that keep their huge TV on 24/7 because they like the pretty screensaver and photos it shows when idle. These same folks take a lot of other steps in their life to try to help the environment (recycle, drive electric cars, etc) but simple stuff like turning things off completely confounds them.
- dwaltrip 3y agoWhat’s the relative impact of a mile driven vs. an hour of the tv being on? Edit: Hmmm. According to gpt-4, the average TV would incur about .02 kg of CO2 per hour of usage, assuming a typical electrical grid mix in the US. While it estimates that driving 1 mile emits avout 0.1 kg of CO2. If that’s the case, 5 hours of TV is roughly equal 1 mile of driving. Interesting. Of course, if the grid has a higher percentage of renewables or the car is electric, that changes things.
- jeffbee 3y agoA year of an Energy Star-rated TV being on for 5 hours a day is equivalent to charging a Tesla Model 3 once.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoA 26” TV or an 80”?
- ForHackernews 3y agoHow much does turning the TV off reduce energy consumption? I know some appliances waste nearly as much power in "standby" mode as they do during operation.
- bombcar 3y agoAnd during the times of the year when you heat the house, it’s often basically a wash - the energy goes into heat anyway.
- zamadatix 3y agoThis figure would have to ignore basic things like the connectivity and just be "Netflix server Wattage / user count = everything that isn't your TV". Even with an egregious TV that's still less remaining Wattage than it takes to get the Wi-Fi signal from the AP radio to your TV in your own house.
- callalex 3y agoAnd that power grid is intelligently and efficiently managed using those same data centers.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoGlobal P2P distribution of torrented movies is at least 4 times more energy efficient than any datacenter system vould ever be.
- sidpatil 3y agoHow did you calculate that?
- felixmeziere 3y agoMy point was more that we would collectively be much worse off without household consumption than without data centers (so no Netflix, no smartly managed grid etc.)