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The most important take away I think is that computing uses a helluva lot of more energy compared to what people think it does. Loading Facebook on your phone a
by thomasfoster96 12y ago
The most important take away I think is that computing uses a helluva lot of more energy compared to what people think it does. Loading Facebook on your phone and seeing a newsfeed uses a fair bit more power than just the fraction of a percent of your battery's storage. Multiply that by 1.3 billion users and by a few thousand request per user per month - I suspect that's a lot of energy.
I think a lot of climate change action includes to a degree a reduction in energy usage - but I don't see that happening any time soon. Unless computers get dramatically more efficient in their energy usage, energy demand will continue to grow. Renewable energy source growth will have to beat it.
- s_kilk 12y ago> Unless computers get dramatically more efficient in their energy usage... Or developers get dramatically better at writing efficient code. Or both.
- thomasfoster96 12y agoI don't think many developers optimise ( or would know how to optimise) for less energy usage. :)
- xpda 12y agoA Google data center near my home uses the equivalent of 1.5% of a nearby coal-fired generating plant's output to produce nothing but zeros and ones. To be fair, Google spends extra money to get electricity from renewable sources, and I'm happy to have them because I like their service. But that's a lot of electricity! Amazon, Microsoft, and other large data centers are similar.