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.
253
AdolfSchmitler @lemmy.world - 1day
Thanks for doing the math. I'm not gonna check it, you seem trustworthy enough.
87
Nusm - 24hr
I’m not gonna check the numbers either. Because I have no idea how. And I don’t even understand them.
Looking at the fuel efficiency table on that same website, it looks like OP used a reasonable average fuel efficiency of 30 mpg or slightly under 8L/100km:
4 miles / 30mpg = 0.13 gallons, or 0.492 liters, so their claim of half a liter of gas also checks out.
The cheapest commercial energy in the US appears to be in North Dakota at $0.0741/kWh, so using $0.05/kWh was very generous.
Just in an attempt to be a bit more accurate, let's assume the individual user's television and internet router use about 900W, so we'll use a final number of 8kW for Netflix's power use per user.
8 kW * 60 hours= 480 kWh
And the cost of all of those kWh at $0.05:
480 kWh * $0.05 = $24.00
Or, the cost in the least expensive state in the US:
480 kWh * $0.0741 = $35.57
National average is $0.14/kWh, so unless Netflix was serving everyone out of North Dakota and Texas, their average cost per user would be much closer to $70 per user.
OP's numbers were definitely already accurate enough for the point. Basically, there's no possible way Netflix needs that much electricity to serve their users.
28
ProdigalFrog - 13hr
Just in an attempt to be a bit more accurate, let's assume the individual user's television and internet router use about 900W
An average router uses between 5 and 20w, and modern LED televisions use between 30 and 180w (on the high end). Even a worst case scenario, like an uncommonly large 60" older Plasma TV would only use around 600w.
5
doughless @lemmy.world - 9hr
Yeah, I almost added "and they most certainly do not" to the end of that sentence, but I was trying to underestimate a little as well.
2
Clent @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 11hr
I like to verify so I asked a LLM, it confirmed the math but also determined he is a sentient banana.
4
IrateAnteater @sh.itjust.works - 1day
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.
31
yobasari @feddit.org - 23hr
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.
13
matsdis - 19hr
"closer to realistic" - technically, but 1 kW is just so much power, I find it hard to imagine.
Say I was streaming from my own home server instead (about 20W, which could serve more then just one user), and over a gigabit Ethernet switch (also about 20W) which could serve a 4k streams to 50 users, but let's say it's just me). Then I would use 0.04 kW of electricity for streaming? Maybe I'm streaming from my gaming PC (0.1 kW idle) and have a large inefficient monitor (another 0.1kW). Then it sums up to 0.24 kW. We're still not close to 1 kW and I'm out of ideas.
Granted, you'll have many more switches because this is the internet. But those won't serve just a single user so the power per user is much smaller too. And netflix servers will use more power, but they are also much better optimized for streaming than my home server, and not 90% idle, shared by many users.
And what would you do if you weren't streaming? Would you turn off your gaming PC and monitor? If not, we can't really fully count their consumption. Maybe... ah, I've got it! You're boiling water for coffee at the same time. Yes, that would be 1kW. All the time, while streaming, one cup of water after the other non-stop.
3
Zombie @feddit.uk - 19hr
Streaming also doesn't emit microplastics all over the road via tyre wear. Streaming doesn't emit brake dust. Streaming doesn't require paving vast quantities of land in tarmac.
3
mushroommunk @lemmy.today - 1day
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.
15
ozymandias @sh.itjust.works - 24hr
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.
17
Pup Biru - 23hr
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)
4
boonhet @sopuli.xyz - 22hr
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.
9
fonix232 - 23hr
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.
5
hitwright @lemmy.world - 23hr
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
5
village604 @adultswim.fan - 22hr
No gaming PC should use 400W unless it's under heavy load.
5
hitwright @lemmy.world - 16hr
Yeah, you're right. I tried my best to make the numbers work and still couldn't reach the bullshit tweet
3
MadMadBunny @lemmy.ca - 24hr
This person maths.
3
Zachariah @lemmy.world - 20hr
total mathhead
probably has a math lab
2
Manticore @lemmy.nz - 13hr
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.
2
SapphironZA @sh.itjust.works - 56min
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.
1
SorryQuick @lemmy.ca - 12hr
I suppose you could also include a sliver of the cost of the show’s production.
1
fonix232 - 23hr
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.
84
BigDanishGuy @sh.itjust.works - 18hr
2kg of CO~2~? Atomic weight of CO~2~ is about 44, of which carbon is 12, so 27% of CO~2~ 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 CO~2~ 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 CO~2~ 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.
4
fonix232 - 8hr
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.
2
Lucidlethargy @sh.itjust.works - 19hr
This is just flat out bullshit. Flat out.
46
mineralfellow @lemmy.world - 18hr
Exactly! Oil isn't dinosaur juice. They lube up with dead plants. Don't make it seem glamorous.
15
Komodo Rodeo - 23hr
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.
36
Tower @lemmy.zip - 21hr
I just want to commend your dedication to using flared bases, even when speaking about people you don't agree with.
7
Komodo Rodeo - 19hr
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...
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.
32
usualsuspect191 @lemmy.ca - 21hr
Yeah this smacks of "but wind turbine blades aren't recyclable"! So? It's still better than what we were doing before.
29
rumba @lemmy.zip - 21hr
wind turbine blades aren’t recyclable
I didn't even know about that.
Wonder if they could crush them up and use them as concrete aggregate.
6
Rooster326 @programming.dev - 18hr
Close. We sharpen them to use against the Kaiju.
14
Rob Bos - 21hr
"made mainly of carbon fiber, fiberglass, and balsa wood" from some random source. Doesn't sound like anything particularly toxic or difficult to source. I can't imagine putting them in landfill is a serious problem. So my response is "so what".
11
rumba @lemmy.zip - 20hr
Why not?
Carbon fiber and fiberglass in concrete foundations would limit microplastics and add strength to the product. Throwing a never-decomposing product into a landfill is just taking up space for something that can decompose over a couple of hundred years. Reuse it at least once it there's a viable solution.
5
Rob Bos - 20hr
Sure. I mean, you could. Probably there are better sources, like construction waste, that you'd want to exhaust first, but I obviously haven't done a serious cost-benefit analysis, nor am I really qualified. My intuition is that you could do it but there are better uses of the time and money.
Relatively inert stuff in a landfill doesn't seem like the highest-priority use of the time and money. The resources used to scrap and recycle a wind turbine blade could probably be much better used for more consequential purposes.
5
TheOakTree @lemmy.zip - 18hr
I don't like the idea of crushed fiberglass in landfills, but it's far down the list of awful things we do to the planet. I think you're correct in assuming the effort is better spent elsewhere.
3
dejected_warp_core @lemmy.world - 22hr
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.
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.
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.
No it’s cool. Just cancel your Netflix and pirate your media.
Thanks Big Think!
23
csolisr - 22hr
Better yet - boycott Big Media so they have even less of a reason to keep gigantic data centers to begin with.
2
null - 1day
Now try saying this about AI
22
Saprophyte @lemmy.world - 23hr
Using the words thank you to respond to Alexa uses the same amount of gasoline a wood chipper takes to consume eleven spotted owls.
15
null - 23hr
Unleaded, though!
2
Trainguyrom @reddthat.com - 21hr
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
5
wildncrazyguy138 - 1day
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.
16
Pollo_Jack @lemmy.world - 14hr
Remove encryption, let users download more files. Problem solved.
14
cassandrafatigue @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 8hr
What problem?
2
U7826391786239 @lemmy.zip - 1day
you exist. and i can't help but notice that you don't feel bad enough about that
10
JackbyDev - 18hr
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.
8
LiveLM - 16hr
Even if it was a ridiculous amount, it makes no sense to blame the end users of the service instead of the service itself
4
BradleyUffner @lemmy.world - 1day
Ok, I'll binge watch videos on some other streaming platform instead. I'm helping!
8
Asafum @feddit.nl - 1day
Well ackshuallllyyyy they're not burning it if they're just wanking 🤓
.../s
7
WanderingThoughts @europe.pub - 22hr
They use their private jet to fly in the best people in the business to handle the matter personality in a hands-on fashion.
3
Barbecue Cowboy - 23hr
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.
3
biggerbogboy @sh.itjust.works - 1day
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
3
Ininewcrow - 23hr
Using Shitter to post this probably does way more to negatively affect the environment more than anything.
6
OpenStars - 22hr
Asking the right questions here!!!
2
cassandrafatigue @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 8hr
Piracy is the green option
Kill an oil exec and then binge watch your fav series!
6
Ichiro - 7hr
Real.. I myself pirate everything.. 🗿
1
Wilco @lemmy.zip - 10hr
Wise fucking words. Aside from boycotting certain businesses we have almost no ability to control the environmental side of things.
5
melsaskca @lemmy.ca - 1hr
"Let's create a system that slowly destroys the planet but, and here me out, we blame it on the users of the system!"
5
Avicenna @programming.dev - 24hr
lol good thinking, take away the one thing that keeps people sedated and watch the world burn
4
k0e3 @lemmy.ca - 24hr
How many Netflix shows of a single ride on a private jet?
4
fodor @lemmy.zip - 6hr
That's why God invented the Pirate Bay.
2
13igTyme - 21hr
Mega yachts have to be started regularly to keep the engine running smoothly. So even if you aren't going anywhere, you still have to spend thousands in gas each few days just so it performs well when you do actually use it.
2
commie @lemmy.dbzer0.com - 43min
watching Netflix is a skill issue anyway. learn to use xdcc or i2p torrents or something
2
MNByChoice @midwest.social - 6min
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.
1
Grandwolf319 @sh.itjust.works - 23hr
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
1
Pup Biru - 23hr
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
3
Trainguyrom @reddthat.com - 22hr
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.
4
Pup Biru - 10hr
I'm guessing you dropped a zero or two on the user count
i was being pretty pessimistic because tbh i’m not entirely sure of the requirements of streaming video… i guess yeah 200-500 is pretty realistic for netflix since all their content is pre-transcoded… i kinda had in my head live transcoding here, but also i said somewhere else that netflix pre-transcodes, so yeah… just brain things :p
also added an extra zero to the wattage
absolutely right again! i had in my head the TDP eg threadripper at ~1500w - it’s 350w or lower
2
Trainguyrom @reddthat.com - 9hr
Hey if you were thinking live-transcode I can definitely see why you'd think around 20 clients per server for CPU transcode and I can also see where such a high wattage would come from!
Edit: fun bonus fact! Netflix offers caching servers to ISPs that they can place on their side of the interconnect to mutually reduce bandwidth costs. By memory from a teardown I saw on reddit like a decade ago, it was a pretty standard 1U single socket server (probably a supermicro whitebox if we're being real)with 4-6 HDDs to serve the media files
1
Pup Biru - 7hr
yeah i remember that as well! considering the bandwidth netflix takes up i’m not surprised at all! i think it’s like 15% of global internet bandwidth or something crazy?
1
Grandwolf319 @sh.itjust.works - 22hr
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.
2
Pup Biru - 22hr
an n150 mini pc - largely considered a very efficient package for home servers - consumes ~15w max without the gpu, and ~9w idle
a raspberry pi consumes 3-4w idle
none of that is supporting more than a couple of people streaming 4k like we’re talking about in the case of netflix
and a single hard drive isn’t even close to what we’re talking about… you’re looking at ~30w at least for the disks alone
as for internet cost, it’s likely tiny… my 24 port gigabit switch from 15 years ago sips < 6w… i can only imagine that’s pretty inefficient compared to today’s standards (and 24 port is pretty tiny for a DC, and port power consumption doesn’t scale linearly)
data centres are just straight up way more efficient per unit of processing than your home anything; it pretty much doesn’t matter how efficient your home gear is, or what the workload is unless you switch it off most of the time - which doesn’t happen in a DC
1
Grandwolf319 @sh.itjust.works - 19hr
Idk where your getting your numbers from.
Here is an article that talks about HDD read power usage being less than 10w:
Even with 30w, it’s still lower than the 75w you mentioned.
Also, that hard drive can serve multiple purposes whereas Netflix is only for steaming movies and tv shows (not music, so you got to add Spotify usage to be fully fair).
2
Pup Biru - 10hr
my numbers are coming from the fact that anyone who’s replacing all their streaming likely isn’t using a single disk… WD red drives (as in NAS drives) according to their datasheet use between 6 and 6.9w when in use (3.6-3.9w at idle)… a standard home NAS has 4-6 bays, and i’m also assuming that in a typical NAS setup they’re in some kind of RAID configuration, which likely means some level of striping so all disks are utilised at once… again, i think all of these are decent assumptions for home users using off the shelf hardware
i’m ignoring sleep here, because sleep for NAS drives leads to premature failure… this is why if you buy WD green drives for your NAS for example and you use linux, you wdparm to turn off sleep to avoid constantly parking and unparking the heads which leads to significantly reduced life (afaik many NAS products do this automatically, or otherwise manage it)
the top end of that estimate for drives (6 drives) is 41.4w, and the low end (4 drives) is 24w… granted, not everyone will have even those 4 drives, so perhaps my estimate is a little off, but i don’t think 30w for drives is an unreasonable assumption
again, here’s where data centres just do better: their utilisation is spread much more evenly… the idle power of drives is not hugely less than their full speed read/write, so it’s better to have constant access over fewer drives, which is exactly what happens with DCs because they have fewer traffic spikes (and can legitimately manage drive power off for hours at a time because their load is both predictable, and smoother due just to their scale)
also, as someone else in the thread mentioned: my numbers for severs were WAY off for a couple of reasons, but basically
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.
that also sounds realistic to me, having realised i fucked up my server numbers by an order of magnitude for BOTH power use, and users served
servers and data centres are just in a class of their own in terms of energy efficiency
this is an off the shelf server with 90 bays that has a 2600w power supply (which even then is way overkill: that’s 25w per drive)… with 22tb drives (off the top of my head because that’s what i use, as it is/was the best $/byte size) that’s almost 2pb of storage… that’s gonna cover a LOT of people with that 2600w, and imo 2600w is far beyond what they’re actually going to be pulling
Stamets in whitepeopletwitter @sh.itjust.works
Own your own fucking responsibility
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.
Thanks for doing the math. I'm not gonna check it, you seem trustworthy enough.
I’m not gonna check the numbers either. Because I have no idea how. And I don’t even understand them.
So obviously he’s right!
The numbers aren't too difficult to verify.
I found this Canadian government web page that says it's roughly 8.9 kWh, so that checks out.
Looking at the fuel efficiency table on that same website, it looks like OP used a reasonable average fuel efficiency of 30 mpg or slightly under 8L/100km: 4 miles / 30mpg = 0.13 gallons, or 0.492 liters, so their claim of half a liter of gas also checks out.
The cheapest commercial energy in the US appears to be in North Dakota at $0.0741/kWh, so using $0.05/kWh was very generous.
The average Netflix user watches about 2 hours per day, or 60 hours per month.
Just in an attempt to be a bit more accurate, let's assume the individual user's television and internet router use about 900W, so we'll use a final number of 8kW for Netflix's power use per user.
8 kW * 60 hours= 480 kWh
And the cost of all of those kWh at $0.05: 480 kWh * $0.05 = $24.00
Or, the cost in the least expensive state in the US: 480 kWh * $0.0741 = $35.57
National average is $0.14/kWh, so unless Netflix was serving everyone out of North Dakota and Texas, their average cost per user would be much closer to $70 per user.
OP's numbers were definitely already accurate enough for the point. Basically, there's no possible way Netflix needs that much electricity to serve their users.
An average router uses between 5 and 20w, and modern LED televisions use between 30 and 180w (on the high end). Even a worst case scenario, like an uncommonly large 60" older Plasma TV would only use around 600w.
Yeah, I almost added "and they most certainly do not" to the end of that sentence, but I was trying to underestimate a little as well.
I like to verify so I asked a LLM, it confirmed the math but also determined he is a sentient banana.
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.
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.
"closer to realistic" - technically, but 1 kW is just so much power, I find it hard to imagine.
Say I was streaming from my own home server instead (about 20W, which could serve more then just one user), and over a gigabit Ethernet switch (also about 20W) which could serve a 4k streams to 50 users, but let's say it's just me). Then I would use 0.04 kW of electricity for streaming? Maybe I'm streaming from my gaming PC (0.1 kW idle) and have a large inefficient monitor (another 0.1kW). Then it sums up to 0.24 kW. We're still not close to 1 kW and I'm out of ideas.
Granted, you'll have many more switches because this is the internet. But those won't serve just a single user so the power per user is much smaller too. And netflix servers will use more power, but they are also much better optimized for streaming than my home server, and not 90% idle, shared by many users.
And what would you do if you weren't streaming? Would you turn off your gaming PC and monitor? If not, we can't really fully count their consumption. Maybe... ah, I've got it! You're boiling water for coffee at the same time. Yes, that would be 1kW. All the time, while streaming, one cup of water after the other non-stop.
Streaming also doesn't emit microplastics all over the road via tyre wear. Streaming doesn't emit brake dust. Streaming doesn't require paving vast quantities of land in tarmac.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
No gaming PC should use 400W unless it's under heavy load.
Yeah, you're right. I tried my best to make the numbers work and still couldn't reach the bullshit tweet
This person maths.
total mathhead
probably has a math lab
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.
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.
I suppose you could also include a sliver of the cost of the show’s production.
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.
2kg of CO~2~? Atomic weight of CO~2~ is about 44, of which carbon is 12, so 27% of CO~2~ 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 CO~2~ 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 CO~2~ 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.
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.
This is just flat out bullshit. Flat out.
Exactly! Oil isn't dinosaur juice. They lube up with dead plants. Don't make it seem glamorous.
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.
I just want to commend your dedication to using flared bases, even when speaking about people you don't agree with.
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...
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/59b028ce-1259-4f95-a6f9-9f0155377d9e.jpeg
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.
Yeah this smacks of "but wind turbine blades aren't recyclable"! So? It's still better than what we were doing before.
I didn't even know about that.
Wonder if they could crush them up and use them as concrete aggregate.
Close. We sharpen them to use against the Kaiju.
"made mainly of carbon fiber, fiberglass, and balsa wood" from some random source. Doesn't sound like anything particularly toxic or difficult to source. I can't imagine putting them in landfill is a serious problem. So my response is "so what".
Why not?
Carbon fiber and fiberglass in concrete foundations would limit microplastics and add strength to the product. Throwing a never-decomposing product into a landfill is just taking up space for something that can decompose over a couple of hundred years. Reuse it at least once it there's a viable solution.
Sure. I mean, you could. Probably there are better sources, like construction waste, that you'd want to exhaust first, but I obviously haven't done a serious cost-benefit analysis, nor am I really qualified. My intuition is that you could do it but there are better uses of the time and money.
Relatively inert stuff in a landfill doesn't seem like the highest-priority use of the time and money. The resources used to scrap and recycle a wind turbine blade could probably be much better used for more consequential purposes.
I don't like the idea of crushed fiberglass in landfills, but it's far down the list of awful things we do to the planet. I think you're correct in assuming the effort is better spent elsewhere.
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/
If that isn't enough to get really fucking mad about this slow-creeping horseshit, I don't know what is.
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.
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.
Say people flying private jets everywhere.
No it’s cool. Just cancel your Netflix and pirate your media. Thanks Big Think!
Better yet - boycott Big Media so they have even less of a reason to keep gigantic data centers to begin with.
Now try saying this about AI
Using the words thank you to respond to Alexa uses the same amount of gasoline a wood chipper takes to consume eleven spotted owls.
Unleaded, though!
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
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.
Remove encryption, let users download more files. Problem solved.
What problem?
you exist. and i can't help but notice that you don't feel bad enough about that
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.
Even if it was a ridiculous amount, it makes no sense to blame the end users of the service instead of the service itself
Ok, I'll binge watch videos on some other streaming platform instead. I'm helping!
Well ackshuallllyyyy they're not burning it if they're just wanking 🤓
.../s
They use their private jet to fly in the best people in the business to handle the matter personality in a hands-on fashion.
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.
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
Using Shitter to post this probably does way more to negatively affect the environment more than anything.
Asking the right questions here!!!
Piracy is the green option
Kill an oil exec and then binge watch your fav series!
Real.. I myself pirate everything.. 🗿
Wise fucking words. Aside from boycotting certain businesses we have almost no ability to control the environmental side of things.
"Let's create a system that slowly destroys the planet but, and here me out, we blame it on the users of the system!"
lol good thinking, take away the one thing that keeps people sedated and watch the world burn
How many Netflix shows of a single ride on a private jet?
That's why God invented the Pirate Bay.
Mega yachts have to be started regularly to keep the engine running smoothly. So even if you aren't going anywhere, you still have to spend thousands in gas each few days just so it performs well when you do actually use it.
watching Netflix is a skill issue anyway. learn to use xdcc or i2p torrents or something
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.
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
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
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.
i was being pretty pessimistic because tbh i’m not entirely sure of the requirements of streaming video… i guess yeah 200-500 is pretty realistic for netflix since all their content is pre-transcoded… i kinda had in my head live transcoding here, but also i said somewhere else that netflix pre-transcodes, so yeah… just brain things :p
absolutely right again! i had in my head the TDP eg threadripper at ~1500w - it’s 350w or lower
Hey if you were thinking live-transcode I can definitely see why you'd think around 20 clients per server for CPU transcode and I can also see where such a high wattage would come from!
Edit: fun bonus fact! Netflix offers caching servers to ISPs that they can place on their side of the interconnect to mutually reduce bandwidth costs. By memory from a teardown I saw on reddit like a decade ago, it was a pretty standard 1U single socket server (probably a supermicro whitebox if we're being real)with 4-6 HDDs to serve the media files
yeah i remember that as well! considering the bandwidth netflix takes up i’m not surprised at all! i think it’s like 15% of global internet bandwidth or something crazy?
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.
an n150 mini pc - largely considered a very efficient package for home servers - consumes ~15w max without the gpu, and ~9w idle
a raspberry pi consumes 3-4w idle
none of that is supporting more than a couple of people streaming 4k like we’re talking about in the case of netflix
and a single hard drive isn’t even close to what we’re talking about… you’re looking at ~30w at least for the disks alone
as for internet cost, it’s likely tiny… my 24 port gigabit switch from 15 years ago sips < 6w… i can only imagine that’s pretty inefficient compared to today’s standards (and 24 port is pretty tiny for a DC, and port power consumption doesn’t scale linearly)
data centres are just straight up way more efficient per unit of processing than your home anything; it pretty much doesn’t matter how efficient your home gear is, or what the workload is unless you switch it off most of the time - which doesn’t happen in a DC
Idk where your getting your numbers from.
Here is an article that talks about HDD read power usage being less than 10w:
https://www.solved.scality.com/high-density-power-consumption-hdd-vs-qlc-flash/
Even with 30w, it’s still lower than the 75w you mentioned.
Also, that hard drive can serve multiple purposes whereas Netflix is only for steaming movies and tv shows (not music, so you got to add Spotify usage to be fully fair).
my numbers are coming from the fact that anyone who’s replacing all their streaming likely isn’t using a single disk… WD red drives (as in NAS drives) according to their datasheet use between 6 and 6.9w when in use (3.6-3.9w at idle)… a standard home NAS has 4-6 bays, and i’m also assuming that in a typical NAS setup they’re in some kind of RAID configuration, which likely means some level of striping so all disks are utilised at once… again, i think all of these are decent assumptions for home users using off the shelf hardware
i’m ignoring sleep here, because sleep for NAS drives leads to premature failure… this is why if you buy WD green drives for your NAS for example and you use linux, you wdparm to turn off sleep to avoid constantly parking and unparking the heads which leads to significantly reduced life (afaik many NAS products do this automatically, or otherwise manage it)
the top end of that estimate for drives (6 drives) is 41.4w, and the low end (4 drives) is 24w… granted, not everyone will have even those 4 drives, so perhaps my estimate is a little off, but i don’t think 30w for drives is an unreasonable assumption
again, here’s where data centres just do better: their utilisation is spread much more evenly… the idle power of drives is not hugely less than their full speed read/write, so it’s better to have constant access over fewer drives, which is exactly what happens with DCs because they have fewer traffic spikes (and can legitimately manage drive power off for hours at a time because their load is both predictable, and smoother due just to their scale)
also, as someone else in the thread mentioned: my numbers for severs were WAY off for a couple of reasons, but basically
that also sounds realistic to me, having realised i fucked up my server numbers by an order of magnitude for BOTH power use, and users served
servers and data centres are just in a class of their own in terms of energy efficiency
here for example: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/storage/4u/ssg-542b-e1cr90
this is an off the shelf server with 90 bays that has a 2600w power supply (which even then is way overkill: that’s 25w per drive)… with 22tb drives (off the top of my head because that’s what i use, as it is/was the best $/byte size) that’s almost 2pb of storage… that’s gonna cover a LOT of people with that 2600w, and imo 2600w is far beyond what they’re actually going to be pulling