21–30 of 329 posts
Or about 11,000 GWh which is about 4% of California which means without the theatrics:
California has 4x more data centers than Ireland.
California: ~810 watts per person. (278,000 GWh / 39.4 million people)
Ireland: ~690 watts per person. (32,000 GWh / 5.3 million people)
We have air conditioning and that may be why we use more POWAH
They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…
Is The Register known for objectively reporting facts? If so, I have fundamentally misunderstood it for a quarter century.
The Reg keeps a snarky tone, but immediately becomes deferential once a vendor begins a content campaign with them.
They also operated a bot account on HN for years that was spamming Register articles for almost 3 years and accumulated 66K karma until I and a couple others complained about it.
That is about 3% of California's total energy usage Or about 11,000 GWh which is about 4% of California which means without the theatrics: California has 4x more data centers than Ireland. California: ~810 watts per person. (278,000 GWh / 39.4 million people) Ireland: ~690 watts per person. (32,000 GWh / 5.3 million people) We have air conditioning and that may be why we use more POWAH
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol the word guzzle in this context is just objectively spin. It's fine, especially because it's so transparent, but it only takes reading 4 words to know the position of the article on the situation.
I find that the word guzzle is dead accurate. They consume a huge amount of the country's electricity not only for no clear benefit to society, but mostly for making it worse, with more social media posts, stupid videos, surveillance, advertising-led consumption, ai slop As compared to productive uses, like lighting, food preservation, home warming, medical use, transport, and useful manufacturing.
if it had been for defense or some other such thing the media outlet wanted to celebrate it'd have been worded "Our defense apparatus sips only 23% of the country's power!"
tl;dr : accuracy isn't what aligns to personal interests, and journalists who choose to use language like this are (generally speaking) disinterested in accuracy and honesty as top priorities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is The Register known for objectively reporting facts? If so, I have fundamentally misunderstood it for a quarter century.
> objectively reporting facts? I believe so. They're not known for neutrally reporting them, which is different.
I don't have any problem with The Register, but reporting laden with value-judging adjectives is not objective.
That is about 3% of California's total energy usage Or about 11,000 GWh which is about 4% of California which means without the theatrics: California has 4x more data centers than Ireland. California: ~810 watts per person. (278,000 GWh / 39.4 million people) Ireland: ~690 watts per person. (32,000 GWh / 5.3 million people) We have air conditioning and that may be why we use more POWAH
What fraction of Irish GDP is linked to datacenters? If I remember correctly from the pre-AI world, datacenters were at the heart of Dublin's industrial strategy, and they were credibly linked to a double-digit fraction of production.
Ireland has been a data center hub for decades - especially thanks to the IDA successfully wooing Microsoft back in 2007 [0], and it helped played a role in helping Ireland partially recover from the AIB and housing collapse back in 2008 and become the tech hub it is today. Heck, it was the corneestone of the IDA's tech FDI policy back then [1]. Heck, Google itself only expanded in Ireland back in the 2000s in large…