sigmoid.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A social space for people researching, working with, or just interested in AI!

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Let’s be honest, if you’re a software engineer, you know where all this compute and power consumption is going. While it’s popular to blame #LLMs, y’all know how much is wasted on #docker, microservices, overscaled #kubernetes, spark/databricks and other unnecessary big data tech. It’s long past time we’re honest with the public about how much our practices are hurting the climate, and stop looking for scapegoats thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the

The MIT Press Reader · The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the CloudAnthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate draws on five years of research and ethnographic fieldwork in server farms to illustrate some of the diverse environmental impacts of data storage.
The Servitor

@kellogh

"Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions."

That's actually much, much lower than I imagined. Considering how much use I get out of the internet, I find this almost a relief?

@TheServitor it does look different when put into perspective

@kellogh

Dear God, don't confront me with the footprint of the steak in my freezer. It's probably as much as my laptop's emissions in a year. Knowledge is power but self-awareness can be a tough row to hoe sometimes.