The internet eats up less energy than you might think • Hacker News Board

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#41

Post by II2II » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

mopsi wrote: post #32

southerntofu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can a company ever go green as long as this kind of thought patterns are mainstream It's fundamentally impossible. Capitalism is what brought this ecological madness down on it, because of its shortsighted profit incentives. The very same system cannot fix the problem, because nothing has changed. Pointing out companies who used fossil fuels was intending to allow us as a society to realize we need to reduce co…

I fail to understand why you bring capitalism into this when it's the most efficient way of dealing with pollution, since it has a pricing mechanism for raw materials, pollution taxes, etc. I've lived in the socialism on the USSR and seen what it looked like, it's day and night compared to how free countries deal with pollution. Guess what happens when raw materials are available for free, the economy is inefficient…

> I've lived in the socialism on the USSR and seen what it looked like, it's day and night compared to how free countries deal with pollution.

It has more to do with free countries than free enterprise. Private businesses used to be notorious for stripping resources from the environment (e.g. strip mining, clear cutting) to keep the cost of resources low and they used to be notorious for dumping pollutants into the environment since they did not have to deal with the costs of pollution. It was public pressure that resulted in environmental regulation, and even then (as you mentioned) they try to circumvent the costs by outsourcing to jurisdictions that are more lenient.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#42

Post by esyir » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #29

ashtonkem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple themselves claims that roughly 80% of the emissions of an iPhone comes from production; with the remainder being transit, use, and end of life recycling. As far as electronics are concerned, the best thing you can do is defer upgrading as long as possible. Interestingly enough, the same is true for cars. It’s often better to just keep using an older car until it dies from a CO2 perspective (sometimes older cars…

Agree eith everything you've said, but with one caveat - the resale market for cars and consumer electronics is completely different. Everyone I know has a drawer full of old laptops/chargers/phones that were purchased new and are only destined for landfill. Meanwhile, cars get reused long after their first owner gets rid of them even if they replace them every two years.

I wish this was the case for gpus now though. They've actually appreciated.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#43

Post by floatboth » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers.

Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing.

To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry Pis around the world. And the trustlessness is dodgy anyway, with a few big mining pools having over 51% of the mining, with everyone basically having to trust the developers, etc.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#44

Post by theden » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

I don't think people generally think the internet as a network was wasting energy.

I tend to think it's mainly the mass amount of commoditised hardware that's the problem, especially if it's thrown away and not recycled, and recently hoarded for mining.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#45

Post by sneak » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #43

> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers. Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing. To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry P…

Neither the miners nor the developers control bitcoin's consensus.

The stability of bitcoin is the tyranny of the installed base. Even non-mining nodes will not relay invalid blocks that break the fundamental rules.

See also: Ethereum Classic, a case study in developer-as-dictator

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#46

Post by icelandicmoss » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #33

maccard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree eith everything you've said, but with one caveat - the resale market for cars and consumer electronics is completely different. Everyone I know has a drawer full of old laptops/chargers/phones that were purchased new and are only destined for landfill. Meanwhile, cars get reused long after their first owner gets rid of them even if they replace them every two years.

It’s certainly much easier to keep a used car running for a decade than it is to keep a used phone running, that’s for sure. And there’s a market specifically designed to support that too. I think the most realistic choice here is to not upgrade phones every 1-2 years, but stretch it to 3. The recent trend of Apple to not include all the accessories in the box is probably a net good, given how many chargers almost co…

My Nokia 6500 is starting to get a bit flaky, but it's done a good 12 years or so... (It's hard to find a better phone with the same form factor.) I get very attached to my devices, not sure I could deal with a 2-3 year turnover.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#47

Post by zamadatix » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #43

> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers. Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing. To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry P…

I'm not a fan of Bitcoin at all but that argument could be used for anything - "what's aggravating is that cars are literally moved by the consumption of power through wasting it on combustion in the engine", "what's aggravating is that computers are literally operated by the consumption of power to waste it on browsing HN", "what's aggravating is that TV images are literally sent by the consumption of power through wasting it on radio waves" and so on. The only case it seems like a waste is if you don't value the output. If someone values browsing HN, individual transport, watching TV, or distributed consensus then it's not wasted it was used.

Inefficient perhaps, but the energy use was intentional for a value to someone not discarded for no gain.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#48

Post by iNane9000 » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #43

> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers. Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing. To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry P…

“exaggerated by some researchers”

I’m beginning to detect a pattern here. Exaggerating researchers are on the rise. It feels as though researchers might be incentivized to exaggerate. The news media help them with that. Maybe we need more research in this area.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#49

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

> From 2010 to 2018, the data workloads hosted by the cloud data centers increased 2,600... But energy consumption for all data centers rose less than 10 percent... What happened, the authors explain, was mainly a huge shift of workloads to the bigger, more efficient cloud data centers — and away from traditional computer centers, largely owned and run by non-tech companies... “The big cloud providers displaced vastly less efficient corporate data centers,” Mr. Koomey said.

This is fascinating, and the first I've heard -- I'm curious if anyone here knows (not just guessing) what the main factors are?

Is it economies of scale with power and cooling and construction? Is it massively higher CPU utilization because servers are on-demand? Is it custom-designed equipment? All of the above, or something else?

I'd guess that being sited in areas of cheap renewable energy would play a big part too, but if the shift described is solely "energy consumption" then I'm assuming it's treating renewables as the same amount of energy.

I know a lot of people here are anti-cloud and pro-hosting your own equipment in your own rack... but I'm now genuinely curious if there's a large environmental difference here.

Re: The internet eats up less energy than you might think

#50

Post by apocalypstyx » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

iNane9000 wrote: post #48

floatboth wrote: post #43

> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers. Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing. To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry P…

“exaggerated by some researchers” I’m beginning to detect a pattern here. Exaggerating researchers are on the rise. It feels as though researchers might be incentivized to exaggerate. The news media help them with that. Maybe we need more research in this area.

Always be wary of the potential for apophenia.