Own your own fucking responsibility
Own your own fucking responsibility
139 comments
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The numbers are are also clearly fictive. Driving a car for 4 miles uses about half a liter of fuel. A liter of gasoline contains about 9kwh of energy meaning, that you would use about 4.5 kwh per half hour of streaming. So the servers would have to draw about 9 KW to serve a single person? That would be like 10 gaming PCs running at full power to serve one person. Are they animating the shows in real time? No compression algorithm is that inefficient and no hard drive uses that much energy.
edit: also they could never be profitable like that. Let's say you watch three hours per day. That would be 9kWx3hrsx30days=810kwh per month. Even if they only pay 5 cents a kWh that would still be over $40 per month just in electricity cost for one user.
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Thanks for doing the math. I'm not gonna check it, you seem trustworthy enough.
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I like to verify so I asked a LLM, it confirmed the math but also determined he is a sentient banana.
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He shows his working though:
That would be 9kWx3hrsx30days=810kwh per month
That alone is enough evidence to prove it was a lie.
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I prefer to think that this post is unrealistically optimistic. If you drive an electric car and live in Quebec, this could very well be true. For reference, Quebec's electric grid is just about 100% hydroelectric power, so your driving emissions would be close to 0.
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I only looked at power consumption, not emissions. If the electricity produced is emissions free than the emissions for both driving and streaming would be zero. So the original statement would be true, but meaningless. But lets compare the energy consumption with an EV. At 15kwh/100km(4.14mi/kWh) the EV would need 15kwh/100km*6,44km=0.966kwh for 4 miles. That still leaves us with a power draw of 1.932KW. That is closer to a realistic but I still don't think the power consumption of streaming is that high.
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I'm not saying their numbers are correct but you are missing: Routers ( four minimum, Netflix data center, backbone isp, local isp, your house), TV, for many a streaming device which can range from the TV itself to a PS5 or gaming PC, and for many a soundbar or amp and speakers.
They probably took max load for all those devices and lumped that all together which, yeah max load isn't right and the routers should actually be split amongst many many houses but it is all part of streaming.
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reminds me of when they use to calculate financial losses from a hack, they would add in the full cost of any hardware touched, and the full price to develop any of the software touched…
ending up at dozens of millions of dollars, just because some looked at a thing
like if you spray painted a wall on building and they charged you with the entire cost of building the entire structure. -
i’d also say manufacturing the devices probably roughly doubles the carbon footprint (same with the car but we’re trying every trick in the book to figure out where the figure came from)
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Don't forget that the grids that power these servers are mixed too, not 100% fossil fuels. And even if they were coal-fired, power generation is more efficient than internal combustion engines.
Likely it'd have to be at LEAST 30-40 kW to serve a single person for it to be equivalent, but I can't be arsed to do the math.
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Trying the close to best scenario I can think of for the tweet to be correct
4 miles is about 6.5 km (rounding up)
Ford fiesta takes uses 6 litres over 100 km (tiny car also rounded down)
0.39l of gasoline is about 3.5 kwh (rounded down)
Well the next step would be apply loved trick: Engine only pases around 1/5 of gasoline energy to useful energy, so that number can be used to make it more possible We get 0.7kwh
Half an hour would give us 0.35kwh
Beffy Gaming PC uses around 400w (my gaming pc uses less) when doing light tasks, so that gives around 0.2kwh
Since I love drinking tea, that leaves me 0.15kwh for a whole litre of tea to chug down every 30 minutes
So with my average binge session I would have consume around 12 litres of tea for the tweet to be viable
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Heh, just did the same but with CO2 emissions. And even considering those, the numbers were wildly off - about 2 days of constant streaming (nearly 48 hours!) equates a standard gas car's 4 mile drive in emissions.
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Excellent calculations!
Dont forget the energy used to extract and transport the fossil fuels. Its purposely never included in the consumer guilt propaganda from the fossil fuel lobby.
Sometimes it takes 20-50% of the energy contained in the fuel to get it to you.
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This person maths.
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total mathhead
probably has a math lab
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I can only assume they're putting in layers. It's not just Netflix, it's also the cost of your internet, of running your TV, of your AC while at home, of your lights, etc... maybe even the footprint of your food. Maybe the cost of any AI upscaling or framerate generation, if Netflix does that.
They may have looked at everything you might use in that 30 min, then compared it to the rate at an arbitrary car's fuel efficiency. Technically true statistics are very easy to deceive people with, especially if most people don't know how to read them.
Assuming ofc, they didn't just make the shit up, too.
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I suppose you could also include a sliver of the cost of the show’s production.
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Honestly, if jets left trails that looked like this then nobody would want to fly so much, and public outcry would be a lot louder.
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I do find it funny they use an old 1950s smoky long range bomber as an example
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If a B-52 is smoking like that it does NOT have a long range anymore
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Also, that number is utter bullshit.
Netflix, like all major streaming platforms, has an incredibly optimised system for providing the media. A 4 mile drive emits ~1.6-2kg of CO2, whereas one hour of streaming from Netflix emits up to 100g per hour as per Netflix themselves (and even that study is being questioned now, with newer ones putting this value around 30-40g). Meaning you'd need to stream for well over two days to even get near the emissions of a 4 mile drive.
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2kg of CO2? Atomic weight of CO2 is about 44, of which carbon is 12, so 27% of CO2 is the carbon from the gasoline. I know that gasoline contains more than just hydrocarbon chains, and that the chains also contain hydrogen. But for the sake of this back of the envelope calculation I'll disregard both.
27% of 2kg is 0.54kg, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline a liter of gasoline is 0.755kg. Aka 2kg of CO2 is the result of burning 0.72L of gasoline. Driving 4miles, or 6.44km on 0.72L is 9km/L, or 21.2mpg. 1.6kg of CO2 would be 0.57L and 11.3km/L or 26.6mpg.
Maybe I shouldn't have disregarded the additives and the hydrogen, but unless they account for about 50% of the weight of the gasoline, then those 4 miles were driven in a something very uneconomic.
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Well the average I found was for the US, and you guys do love your SUVs even in completely unreasonable areas/spaces. And SUVs do get around 15-20MPG when used properly.
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Blue checkmarks fund Nazis
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This screenshot is from before twitter was aquired.
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Top account still has their blue checkmark… and bottom still hasn’t deleted their account.
Funding and participating with Nazis is still supporting them.
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The original tweet's claim is false.
TLDR: It referenced an oral interview from a French think tank called The Shift Project. They have since acknowledged it as an error after a fact check from the International Energy Agency. BigThink originally tweeted this in 2019 along with a corresponding article. They have since issued a correction on the article and deleted the tweet. The IEA estimated that it would take around 45 hours of Netflix streaming to generate the carbon emissions of driving 4 miles.
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The IEA estimated that it would take around 45 hours of Netflix streaming to generate the carbon emissions of driving 4 miles.
Just a little 90x error, lol
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And they call themselves BigThink... .They really ought to change their name, it does not suit them. As they clearly don't think before they scream.
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https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines
Turns out my choice to not own a TV is green.
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This is just flat out bullshit. Flat out.
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Exactly! Oil isn't dinosaur juice. They lube up with dead plants. Don't make it seem glamorous.
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Real talk, Big Think can cram this bullshit up their asses.
I'm so sick and tired of having to humour these asinine Malthusian-rooted arguments against simply being alive in society, as if everyday people doing anything more than pulling air into their faces were an unwelcome imposition on the Earth - this, especially, given the scale of unchecked industrial/commercial pollution while industries continuously resist and derail efforts to regulate and sanction it.
Granted, this kind of talk doesn't crop up every single day IRL, but it's starting to feel that way in online communities. Why the fuck are people allowing these hacks to make them feel guilty just for going about their lives, as though having a coffee or driving to see their family 500 miles away were equivalent to festooning themselves with skinned baby seals or crushing endangered leopard cubs underfoot? If global resources hadn't been so willfully, purposely mismanaged for 200+ years, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. Now media talking heads want me to feel guilty for watching TV? They can fuck themselves with BR40 light bulbs.
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I just want to commend your dedication to using flared bases, even when speaking about people you don't agree with.
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After the spiel, believe it or not, I feel kind of guilty accepting that compliment given that I meant flared-end-first when suggesting they fuck themselves with the BR40's...
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Not to say that netfix isn't horrible, but how much did Netflix save in CO2 buy gutting the movie theater and video rental industry? Surely it's better to stream than it is to drive to a physical location, pick up a crystalized block of oil, drive it home and shove it into our VCR.
Hell, when they were doing disc delivery, it was coming through the mail who was already driving through the hood in most places.
Hell, I wonder how much co2 it cost to make the DVD/VHS tapes in the first place.
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Stamets, it's cool, I know you're putting this out there to illustrate some obviously bad takes.
<rant>
Personally, I've kind of had it with these think-tank, astro-turfing, menaces to social media and society writ-large. I think it's high time that we all start getting a little louder about who's behind these things when we spot them here, and elsewhere. Lex (in the post) has the right take, but it's probably even better to get the word out about the source of this blame-shifting crap.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/big-think/
The Big Think is privately owned through Freethink Media. Some of the initial investors in the project were Peter Thiel from PayPal, Tom Scott of Nantucket Nectars, television producer Gary David Goldberg, lead investor and venture capitalist David Frankel, and former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. Revenue is generated through advertising, sponsored content, and subscriptions to the website’s E-learning platform.
If that isn't enough to get really fucking mad about this slow-creeping horseshit, I don't know what is.
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It's time to execute Peter Thiel
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Nothing you do will ever come close to the devastation caused by commercial fishing industry.
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There are several industries that can make that claim
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I'm sure that's true but I hate the commercial fishing industry the most 💜
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The millennial industry causing the worst of the devastation.
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And all of them need to at least have a little break while we figure out how to unfuck the process
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Fucking true
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No it’s cool. Just cancel your Netflix and pirate your media. Thanks Big Think!
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Better yet - boycott Big Media so they have even less of a reason to keep gigantic data centers to begin with.
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Say people flying private jets everywhere.
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"Let's create a system that slowly destroys the planet but, and here me out, we blame it on the users of the system!"
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The users vote for democracy and market economy. We need kings if somebody else should be responsible.
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Pretty sure we're working on it
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Now try saying this about AI
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Using the words thank you to respond to Alexa uses the same amount of gasoline a wood chipper takes to consume eleven spotted owls.
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Unleaded, though!
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The funny thing is, with AI each individual token is surprisingly efficient, but each query is burning 10s or 100s of tokens, and a single interaction can lead to 10s or 100s of queries. Factor in that there's forced AI integrations into things that don't need it on top of the millions of active users, the near constant training of new models, and suddenly its ballooned into an amount of energy that's noticable on a global scale
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That's bullhonkey of the highest fucking order!
One hour of streaming video typically uses around 0.08 kWh, or 288000 Joules, while an electric car can drive a mile with more or less 0.346 kWh, or 1245600 joules, which is to say driving 4 miles is equivalent to 17.3 hours of Netflix!
Source for streaming Cost: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines
Source for electric cars KWH per 100 Mile: https://ecocostsavings.com/electric-car-kwh-per-mile-list/
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I haven't heard "bullhonkey" since 1991 and am a big fan of what you've done here.
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Here’s a Big Think. I used to drive 4 miles to blockbuster then pick out a plastic coated VHS, then play it on my plastic coated VCR on my TV that was at least 10x the width of current TVs.
Then, 3 days later, drive like a mad racer with no brakes to get back to the Blockbuster 2 minutes before they closed.
And that’s just like the other 80% of America who don’t have trains, buses or decent bike lanes. So kindly FO on guilt tripping us for our streaming habits, TYVM.
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Remove encryption, let users download more files. Problem solved.
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What problem?
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Emissions concerns.
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you exist. and i can't help but notice that you don't feel bad enough about that
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Piracy is the green option
Kill an oil exec and then binge watch your fav series!
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Real.. I myself pirate everything.. 🗿
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Is that only if you stream it? What if I download it a d watch it locally? I know damn well my own computer doesn't use that much electricity, and the AIO cooler doesn't need to have the liquid replaced (or at least, not for a long, long time).
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I'm not a very technical person, but is there really a difference in total power consumed for streaming data in real time vs. downloading it to watch locally later? Like in terms of data and electricity used end to end, I assume it would be the same. But again, I'm somewhat dumb
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It is the same, assuming it's 1 machine to 1 machine. Streaming is still downloading the thing to your machine, just to a temporary space while you also watch the bits you've already received.
But it generally isn't just 1 machine to 1 machine. Downloading from a torrent isn't 1 machine to 1 machine, either. That's actually kinda the whole point with bittorrent.
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This reminds me of that article someone shared here (I think) about your Spotify streaming's carbon footprint. It was a very odd article. I think it was likely factually correct, but it even said something like "streaming all year produces as much CO2 as (incredibly small task)". It seemed AI generated, like the dumped in data and told it the conclusion it should come to. Because I don't think anyone reasonable would've read it and thought that streaming music for a while year was in any way comparable to the other thing. Again, something minor, like driving a few miles. Something a huge amount of people do every day.
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Even if it was a ridiculous amount, it makes no sense to blame the end users of the service instead of the service itself
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Yup. I think it's fair to say someone driving a gas guzzler SUV needs to make a little more effort to help with global warming... get an EV or better yet, take transit.
But with electrical stuff, there exists green power that's cheaper than the alternatives, it's the industry's fault for not making effort on that. I'm not the fucking power company.
It's gotta be a shared responsibility on this instead of finger pointing. I'm taking transit and fighting tooth and nail against my employer's stupid RTO policies (while looking for a job elsewhere). I'm doing my part on the things I can control and I expect industry to do the same.
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Ok, I'll binge watch videos on some other streaming platform instead. I'm helping!
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Well ackshuallllyyyy they're not burning it if they're just wanking 🤓
.../s
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Probably thinking too much into it, but a lot of Instagram influencers out there are running a barely disguised escort service for the rich. One of the things they'll ask if they feel like you might want to hire them is if you want to fly them out. So, maybe burning jet fuel? Yeah, we're stretching things real bad here but we can make it fit rationally as well as figuratively.
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I mean, if they’re wanking with maximum force, speed and twist without destroying the cylinder (or adding supports to the cylinder,) as well as adding ferrocerium or magnesium shavings to aid in the ignition process, and if the stroking motion produces enough joules of energy, hence heat, the crude oil could ignite, producing greenhouse emissions in their place of wankage. /s
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They use their private jet to fly in the best people in the business to handle the matter personality in a hands-on fashion.
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Wise fucking words. Aside from boycotting certain businesses we have almost no ability to control the environmental side of things.
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watching Netflix is a skill issue anyway. learn to use xdcc or i2p torrents or something
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there many movie torrents on i2p?
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oh, yes
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Using Shitter to post this probably does way more to negatively affect the environment more than anything.
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Asking the right questions here!!!
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That's why God invented the Pirate Bay.
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lol good thinking, take away the one thing that keeps people sedated and watch the world burn
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How many Netflix shows of a single ride on a private jet?
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Man out in the wilds we can cover 10 times that distance in that time and not even have to worry about the law man.
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Am I the only one who sees this as an endorsement for self hosting?
I would love to see the numbers for 5 people watching an already downloaded movie off a hard drive.
If the house has solar panels and is net zero, it would make the emissions 0 right?
Edit: while I do agree about economies of scale, what I am doubting is streaming every single time vs playing locally or steaming in a local network. Local play is always more efficient
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self hosting is wildly less efficient… one of the biggest costs in data centres is electricity, and one of the biggest constraints is electrical infrastructure… you have pretty intense power budgets in data centres and DC equipment is pretty well optimised to be efficient
meanwhile a home server doesn’t likely use server hardware (server hardware is far more efficient), is probably about 5-10y or more out of date, and isn’t likely particularly dense: a single 1500w server can probably service ~20 people in a DC… meanwhile an 800w home server could probably handle ~5 people
add the fact that netflix pre-transcodes their vids in many different qualities and formats, whilst home streaming - unless streaming original quality - mostly re-transcodes which is a very energy-hungry process
heck even just the hard drives: if everyone ran their own servers and stored their content that’s thousands if not hundreds of thousands more copies of the data, and all that data is probably on spinning disks
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a single 1500w server can probably service ~20 people in a DC
I'm guessing you dropped a zero or two on the user count, also added an extra zero to the wattage (most traditional colocation datacenters max out at around 2,000 concurrent watts per 48U rack, so each server is going to target around 50-75w per rack unit of average load)
Netflix is going to be direct-playing pre-transcoded streams, so the main constraint would be bandwidth. If we average out all streams to 5mb/s, that's about 200 streams per gigabit of network bandwidth. Chances are that server has at least 10 gigabit networking, probably more like 50 gigabit if they have SSDs storing the data (especially with modern memory caching). That's between 2,000 and 10,000 active clients per server
Back of the envelope math says that's around 0.075 watts per individual stream for a 150w 2U server serving 2000 clients, which looks pretty realistic to my eyes as a Sysadmin.
Granted for a service the size of Netflix we aren't talking about individual servers we're looking at a big orchestrated cluster of servers, but most of that is handling basic web server tasks that are a completely solved problem and each individual server is probably serving a few million clients thanks to modern caching and acceleration features. The real cost and energy hit is going to be in the content distribution which I covered above.
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My home server used 5w at idle and 9w while streaming. Add another 10w for the hard drive.
According to your example, using Netflix a single user would uses 75w.
That doesn’t include the internet cost which I bet is significant as well.
There is a reason paying for Netflix is like $20 a month and internet cost is like $50-100 whereas it costs close to $1/month of electricity for self hosting and no internet cost during usage.
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Aarrrr, that's why we do the work ourselves!
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Remember, our governments are one way to implement collective action, but not the only way.
You negotiate for higher wages. (Including by finding a higher paying job elsewhere.)
Your union negotiates for higher wages.
Your government should negotiate for higher wages.You do right for the environment.
Your unions, friend groups, and community organizations do right for the environment.
Your government should do right for the environment.When any level fails, it is time to build up the other levels.
No, I have no idea how to organize a soccer game, let along a union or community organization.
139 comments