51–59 of 59 posts
Alas, the author failed to do adequate research before getting on their high horse. Yes, cloud computing sucks power (which is then vented to the outside world, it could be recycled _and_ cut latency) but you know what pushes out more CO2? Poor house insulation.
And you know what emits more CO_2 than poor insulation? Transport! And what emits more CO_2 than transport? China!
With that logic, we'll never cut emissions anywhere.
I appreciate the sentiment but this article is riddled with factual errors. 1) digitization (which includes tracking objects in the real world with IoT tech) increases efficiency, which results in moving fewer real objects around in the world, thus reducing total energy consumption. Think of Netflix vs manufacturing and shipping DVDs to stores then driving to the store to buy them. 2) data centers are far from the bi…
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The ironic bit is personal cars account for 20% of the US emissions already. Transportation is the largest category, at near 30%. Electricity is a close second, but pretending data centers use more than say the air conditioners across the US is probably false. Sure, per individual, data centers might use more, but something like better insulating houses would probably do more on net for emissions than just dismantlin…
There's always some other industry/technology/nation/group that uses times the energy: "China emits far more CO_2" (total), "The US emits far more CO_2" (per capita), "Industry emits far more than households", etc.
Alas, the author failed to do adequate research before getting on their high horse. Yes, cloud computing sucks power (which is then vented to the outside world, it could be recycled _and_ cut latency) but you know what pushes out more CO2? Poor house insulation.
> Poor house insulation And you know what emits more CO_2 than poor insulation? Transport! And what emits more CO_2 than transport? China! With that logic, we'll never cut emissions anywhere.
gotcha.
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yes, but the masts, wifi, network and servers to support that consume a lot more than 10Wh
And when you divide that by millions of users, how many watt hours is it?
It’s interesting to see this article for me because it is similar to the “Bitcoin is bad because CO2” articles and arguments that arise from time to time. To which I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to argue you can’t really say Bitcoin is bad and shouldn’t be allowed to exist for that reason without also agreeing that other stupid things we do with computers should suffer the same fate. Which surprisingly attracts a fair…
That point is debatable because Bitcoin and snapchat are different in kind. For bitcoin to function, it must be deliberately very computationally expensive. Generally speaking other software limits deliberately costly operations to certain functions (e.g. password hashing) and inefficiencies caused by of developers disinterested in performance can be reworked. Even the resource draw of a high end gaming for a few (or many) hours a week and a 24/7 miner are distinguishable in both raw and cost/benifit ways.
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> Poor house insulation And you know what emits more CO_2 than poor insulation? Transport! And what emits more CO_2 than transport? China! With that logic, we'll never cut emissions anywhere.
So you're saying that insulation, which makes an occupant more comfortable, and spending less money on energy, is going to be more popular than taking away all computing and plunging everyone into the 1950s? gotcha.
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If Mobile Safari and Chrome for Android supported extensions, it probably would already be ubiquitous.
Mobile safari does support adblocks. https://1blocker.com/ seems to be the one most people recommend (I personally haven't tried it)