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Comment by Seirdy | Hacker News Reader

On a smaller scale, you could do what Low Tech Magazine [0] does and actually have downtime when sunlight is low. Since this doesn't happen too often and users can just save articles (with RSS, email newsletters, etc.), websites like this can just be powered by a single computer, solar cell, and small battery in the owner's Barcelona apartment. Thanks to small static pages and tiny dithered images, the site is almost always up.

The future doesn't always need to be as "webscale" as Google; sometimes, scaling down is the smart thing to do. The minimal approach of LTM is the technology equivalent of riding a bicycle (or electric velomobile [1]) to work instead of driving.

[0]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com

[1]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobil...

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Actually, I'd say LTM's is the car, and Google's approach is public transport.

LTM's approach required producing, assembling and shipping a full 2GHz/1GB computer, plus PV, PV-controller and router, all to serve a single site. And it's even turned off some of the time!

Google, on the other hand, is more like a fleet of trains; sure, each one is a honkin' beast, but it also transports thousands of passengers/sites at once, possibly millions in its lifetime.

The bicycle analogy doesn't really work, because a bicycle is just a performance attachment to the real vehicle: the human.

This is actually great: imagine a CDN in various geographical locations all of which work off sunlight in their own time zone (and turn off with no sunlight).

This way you can have 24/7 fully green content delivery to consumers.

Although that being said we could just try to cover the earth with as many generators everywhere and then fully connect the grids.

> Although that being said we could just try to cover the earth with as many generators everywhere and then fully connect the grids.

This is the easier route: you do this by having as many businesses as possible purchase renewables PPAs, where they're specifically contracting for renewable energy.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/as-corporate-renewable-buyi...

I respect lowtechmagazine's experiment: it's designed to make you think, and it succeeds.

But CPUs have an incredibly high embodied energy, we should aim for full utilization of servers, regardless of the source of that energy.

If it's three CPUs with carbon-neutral electricity, or one CPU with electricity from coal, the latter is the responsible choice.

Did you mean the reverse? I.e. "If it's one CPU with carbon-neutral electricity, or three CPUs with electricity from coal, the latter is the responsible choice."

If no, then why. I can explain my confusion if needed.

I don't mean the reverse, I mean that running one CPU 24 hours a day instead of 3 CPUs 8 hours a day is better, even if the 3 CPUs have carbon-neutral energy and the 1 CPU does not.

To be fair, these are artificial choices, and that's not even what lowtech was doing (they have a battery). I was responding to the post about the CDNs that stop working at night.

I mean, technically, that's what Google's solution ends up doing.

Their DCs are globally distributed, so their timings on when they'd actually be doing the heavy lifting is shuffled around.

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