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Comment by wolfy1993

21 hours ago

Remind me what golf club comes close to the energy consumption of a data center?

Or do you literally mean the entire sport of golf vs 1 data center?

8 comments

wolfy1993

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bahmboo  14 hours ago

That's fair and I left it as is knowing that. But it was still factually correct.

The main point is people worrying about resources and how to allocate them. We are creatures who want joy and I will not apologize for that. Certainly in face of abstract things such as "the environment". Which environment? I am a humanist. That definition varies. Golf is not the problem sorry to pick on it!

alexk307  21 hours ago

I was curious and tried to come up with a crude estimate - all of the golf courses in the US use approximately the same amount of energy (mowing, fertilizer, etc) as one 1GW DC does.

  • xp84  21 hours ago

    K, but they're paying for that energy though. And the land and the building costs, etc. I really don't want to live in a country where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should.

    The fact is, at this point there is so much demand for DC capacity that the prices are super high, and thus it's worth building them. Many people believe that it's a bubble or whatever. If they're right, well then a lot of people building DCs right now will lose their shirts. If they're wrong and the demand is sustained, DCs are exactly what we need to be building.

    • djeastm  19 hours ago

      >where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should.

      It's not really arbitrary though, is it? It's decided by duly-elected representatives who answer to the citizens of the municipality. A government "of the people", etc.

      I feel like what you're arguing against is precisely why we have local governments in the first place.

      1 reply →

  • torginus  18 hours ago

    Is there such a thing as a 1GW data center? Like a beefy gaming PC easily uses 1 KW According to Google, an individual GPU tower consumes anywhere between 10-100kW. An 1GW data center is can fit in a size of a mid size apartment.