Food for thaught - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 03:35:56 pm
content: Streaming videos in the UK takes the equvalent power of six nuclear power stations, apparently a Netflix or Amazon prime film uses about a Kilo watt hour of power.https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/internet-tv-and-mobile-video-watching-threaten-to-make-energy-demands-soarAnd Lithium batteries for a Tesla car produces arround 17.5 tonnes of CO2 according to a Sweedish study.https://m.focus.de/auto/elektroauto/e-auto-batterie-viel-mehr-co2-als-gedacht_id_7246501.html?fbclid=IwAR0ueEZpUydEeciuU662mw7cg1E5HHHBPKimux-YoYCfLO--0H6mZuhxKFI

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 04:05:47 pm
content: Streaming is stupid, if it's the same content more than once. Content should be downloaded, watched as many times as the user wants and deleted, when no longer needed.I don't know if the one above Li-ion batteries is true or not. Of course it needs to be competed with the emissions from a petrol car: including maintenance, manufacture, as well as running.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 06:26:08 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on June 06, 2019, 03:35:56 pmI can't find that number in the linked article. It would be interesting to know how they derived it. Typical power of a nuclear power station is 1 GW and the entire UK's average electric power consumption in 2017 was 323 TWh or about 37 GW. So that would be about 1/6 of the UK's electricity that is spent on streaming video?Want to know something that waste a stupid amount of energy?"Alex de Vries, a bltcoin specialist at PwC, estimates that the current global power consumption for the servers that run bitcoin’s software is a minimum of 2.55 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to energy consumption of22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year—almost the same as Ireland. Google, by comparison, used 5.7 TWh worldwide in 2015. What’s more, bltcoin “miners” consume about five times more power than they did last year, and orders of magnitude more than just a few years ago—and there are no signs of a slowdown."https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/07/09/why-bitcoin-uses-so-much-energy

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 06:25:01 pm
content: Bitcoin, the concept that values itself on how many resources humanity can waste creating it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 07:34:44 pm
content: 1kWh to stream one 2 hour movie seems like a lot more than it would really take. Even if they're transcoding every playback instance (a very silly way to do it), a hardware encoder would not use anywhere near 500W per stream. If it includes energy used on the receiving end, I can see it getting up there if the viewer uses an older gaming PC and a plasma TV. That's not a fair comparison, since that energy would still be used if the viewer plays the movie from a Bluray instead.Most cryptocurrencies being energy intensive is a problem to solve by developing and using energy efficient cryptocurrencies. That could be by designing it so that the mining process is used to do useful work outside the cryptocurrency system (e.g. Curecoin and Foldingcoin) or something other than energy limits mining. The latter aligns best with environmentalists but so far, no scheme has achieved real success. The efficiency can be really good - I calculated that in late 2017, mining Swagbucks returned more profit for the energy used than commuting 20 miles round trip to a $50/hour job in a Prius. (That's with the unrealistic assumption that the workplace uses no energy, but it's also fair to say that at least some of the energy used there serves other useful purposes.)

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 08:18:53 pm
content: Food For Thought ??

author: SteveyG
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 08:35:53 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 07, 2019, 07:34:44 pmI guess it includes all the infrastructure to stream from the servers to the end device - so ISP servers, DSLAMs, modems, routers etc.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 08:41:08 pm
content: Somebody should market a plug in electric heater that mines bitcoin. Concatenate that energy use. And lower your heating cost.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 09:01:21 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 07, 2019, 07:34:44 pmSorry to say it but: maybe people should just trade normal currencies/commodities instead?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 10:32:42 pm
content: Quote from: Circlotron on June 07, 2019, 08:41:08 pmThat's called a Bitcoin miner!Quote from: apis on June 07, 2019, 09:01:21 pmWhat I would like to see is a cryptocurrency that is "mined" by hosting a service such as (legal) file sharing or hosting a wireless network. I can see the latter being very useful and something that would work well if a VPN provider could cooperate. That is, "miners" are open APs that are firewalled to only allow connections to participating VPN providers, wireless users have to pay for access (possibly as part of a VPN subscription they can also use at home), and the users hosting the miners get a little profit as an incentive to provide access. Later on, additional features like local services and P2P links between sites can be added. The ideal would be if it ends up becoming an alternative to ISPs in populated areas, if only to keep ISPs honest.I remember some service back in 2008 or so that offered legal free music downloads in exchange for letting your PC do work. It wasn't successful largely because most users who would pay for computing services want their data private.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 12:57:03 pm
content: Seems there is yet another report, this time German showing that electric cars are not so green. Amusingly this article shows a diesel generator supplyinf an EV charging point.https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/new-study-shocks-electric-cars-considerably-worse-climate-diesel-cars?fbclid=IwAR27j6qUS0I9brui8f0amHesMvvFsdoAYE4-z-HRQ0B54cE3IxtNI2IcBvU

author: m98
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 01:36:10 pm
content: Both EV studies you refer to are already debunked and busted.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 02:38:20 pm
content: Quote from: m98 on June 10, 2019, 01:36:10 pmWhere I keep coming across these reports but none debunking them.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 02:51:56 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on June 10, 2019, 02:38:20 pmMy first thought is that there is more money at work spreading the disinformation than debunking it. Is that too tinfoil?https://electrek.co/2019/04/22/study-electric-cars-dirtier-diesel-debunked/https://innovationorigins.com/no-diesel-is-not-better-for-the-environment-than-electric/

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 03:13:54 pm
content: The Sweedish report is not saying that Diesels are better for health than electric and neither is the German one what they are saying is that at present all that is going on is the CO2 release is being moved elsewhere. I dont think that the Motor industry is trying to downplay electric to the contary they are pushing it and in favor of electric cars, after all it is cheaper to make electric motors than IC engines of any type and design and development costs are lower with no requirment to meet ever more stringent emission regulations. Ford closeing the engine plant in wales points to that, also the motors and electronics are all being made in cheaper labour areas and use far less hand work with nearly all robotic manufacturing, all this points to more profits for car manufacturers with higher asking prices for the cars and lower production costs.Electric cars are not a pannacea to all health problems in towns as there will still be rubber and brake dust created by these vehicles perhaps even more as the accelertion is greater so more tyre wear and harder braking.Also the debunkers have just as big if not bigger axe to grind and do not seem to be from any respectable university or research institute.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 03:45:45 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on June 10, 2019, 03:13:54 pmA lot less brake dust thanks to regen.http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/brk200/

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 04:07:31 pm
content: I call bollocks on this whole story. Someone wants a grant and wrote a paper for a sustainability conference backed by some energy suppliers wanting to look responsible but actually not giving a fuck because they are being paid for it.Nearly all of the pre-generated content from streaming services is edge cached at major ISPs, pre-encoded and pre-seeded globally. Backbone transit is expensive so it is only done once to each edge location. Also efficiency is quite high because watts cost a lot of money in datacentres so the drive to keep costs down is high so power efficiency is number one. Plus everyone is starting to rent computer time from pools of equipment which can be crammed tight and turned off when not required.Now cryptocurrency; that's a fucking stupid idea.