Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/google-and-microsoft-consume-more-power-than-some-countries

by croes • 2 years ago

17 7 2 years ago

gnabgib• 2 years ago

Discussion (59 points, 7 hours ago, 60 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40967101

mrandish2• 2 years ago

"some countries" is a pretty low bar since many large university campuses probably consume more power than North Korea. (Arizona State University = ~80,000 on campus students https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_public_u...).

Also, if we're counting their cloud data centers, MSFT/GOOG are renting server capacity to millions of customers - which is kind of like comparing countries with the largest power utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric (N. Cal), Consolidated Edison (NY)).

playingalong• 2 years ago

NK has several million people. Surely they are not as advanced in consumer consumption of energy. But I would still guess the whole of NK eats more than some uni campus.

theyianster2• 2 years ago

It's an interesting point to consider. If you look at Google Earth—there are very few lights on during the night in North Korea. The comparison of the North to the South is stunning—and even more stunning considering the imbalance of raw and earth materials in each country, but that's a separate thing.

I think Americans generally fail to appreciate our shared, unspoken mindset of abundance. Our grocery stores are stocked with food we'll never eat, we leave lights on and charge our electronics when we don't need to, we drive when we don't need to...all the way down to Dunkin' Donuts throwing away hundreds of donuts per store per day. We waste so much stuff, just because we can.

If you remove the North's nuclear ambitions and just consider on a human level—25,000,000/80,000 would mean that for the assumption to hold, an ASU student would need to use 312.5 times more power than a North Korean. It's my guess, that if you do not include the power used in Chinese factories where workers are from NK, that probably checks out. I would take another bold stroke and say that the power used by NK on an institutional and military level is probably similar to ASU's consumption—I know ASU has a (probably smaller) nuclear lab of its own. This also depends on how we count power consumption—is the jet fuel and gas used by students' travel counted? North Korea only has like 3 Soviet-era planes and very few vehicles, and travel is generally a disproportionate use of energy and carbon emissions for the average person.

The problem with any sort of analysis like this is everything we (as the public) know about NK is from defectors. However, the defectors also skew our perspective—they are generally from higher class families that serve in military positions or travel in ways that can get them closer to the border (not all cases, but a fair generalization). They would generally (again making very broad strokes here) use much more electricity than the average person. For this reason, and it's ironic, but most SK scholars I met thought that we in the West _overestimated_ the North's living standards, but they had an ulterior motive in looking to win the soft power war.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts. I lived in Seoul for a while and was just fascinated by the imbalance between the two countries.

linearrust• 2 years ago

"some countries" is a pretty low bar since many large university campuses probably consume more power than North Korea.

You think ASU consumes more power than a nuclear armed nation of 20 million people? You sound like someone who graduated from a state university.

theyianster2• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

Google and Microsoft consume more power than some countries

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