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Comment by alexanderdmitri | Hacker News Reader

Could you explain this more? I would think energy use is quantifiable when payed for by metered consumption.

It is quantifiable, but it's not easily attributable. That is, you can tell that e.g. New York used up 104 terawatt-hours in one year[0], but it's harder to tell what this energy was used for - and, given telecommunications, how much of it was used to fulfill services around the world that just happen to be using a data center in New York.

Price isn't good approximation either, as it's pretty much arbitrary - prices are determined by trade, fluctuate all the time. Regular people only see a smoothed-out, low frequency version of that.

[0] - 8.6 megapersons living in New York * 12 MWh US average electricity use per person per year.

Maybe there's some misunderstanding here. I'm not saying cost is a good, or even viable, way of quantifying energy consumption.

Since energy suppliers meter their output to apply a price, I'm wondering how hidden costs could exist (unless the software is somehow circumventing or undermining the meters?).

I would think it'd be pretty straight-forward experiment to use software from the late 80s / early 90s for a couple weeks, measure machine energy consumption, then compare with the consumption from a machine running the latest version of everything for two weeks. Next month repeat but also use a processor from the 90s for the first two weeks. Rinse, repeat, extrapolate, apply statistics, &c. Maybe try adjusting for or comparing differences in appliances common then and now.

If software energy costs are somehow hidden, I can only think they're hidden because we're deliberately not choosing to look at them.

It's not, though. You don't pay the electric bill for most services you consume.

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