Tempted to do the same. Like it’s a good OS but Microsoft seems intent to drive it into the ground by being insanely annoying. PowerToys is the only bright spot right now.
According to the paper, the public health cost from data centers is 1/3 of the road transportation emissions of California. The tool they used (https://www.epa.gov/cobra) to calculate the emissions impact doesn’t have aviation emissions.
Following from your model California is responsible for roughly 9.6% of the total road transportation emissions in the U.S > So 1/3rd of that is 3.2% . So road transportation's health cost is roughly 30x higher than datacenters'. Aviation, while extremely polluting (~9%), is also dwarfed by road transport due to the latter's shear volume
Another thing to observe: The paper's claims are based on a McKinsey projection to 2030 that assumes 'a strong decrease of road transport emissions' and a 'surging demand for AI data centers' that 'outweighs power plants emission efficiency improvement'.
Contrast this to today where energy estimates are 2% for datacenters vs. 80% for road transport. Guess what is causing more outweighing of power plant emission efficiency improvement as that fleet of cars, trucks and lorries is electrifying (the reason for McKinsey's reduction projection)?
Now I'm not saying we should let data-centers get a free pass. Pollution is a serious problem. But in terms of priorities, curbing datacenters might not be the number one concern.
I used to be quoted that for 20MBps and even 8MBps! these days it's a bit better since you can get that for about $150 if you're lucky enough to be near a fibre line.
I'm glad they're here to shake things up, our local ISPs are insane. You should see some of the quotes I've gotten for internet[1] at work and that's in a rather dense place out of the city center! The worse wat $650/month for 8Mbps! The $100 plan I get at work is probably overkill but the internet is no longer a bottleneck to our work like it once was with 20 devices using a 5MBps ADSL line. Before it was legal people smuggled kits in and used the roaming plans from a neighboring country. The $350 sounds like a lot, but that's what the fibre providers charge to terminate at your house, more if they need to lay more cable. You'll find plenty in the ghetto areas.
At home I've got fibre which is about as good as Starlink offers for $100. It used to be 20Mbps and it went up to 75Mbps max late last year when it looked like starlink would enter and they're gonna do 300MBps soon. It seems local ISPs are trying to do better offering more bandwidth though it's still expensive and heavily abuses "up to" marketing. Like, there's no reason that ISP can't offer 20MBps for $30.
It's not the easiest country to do business, there are a lot of exchange rate shenanigans and ISPs seem addicted to rent seeking. Heck, getting Starlink approved seemed to be a huge mission that surprised the execs working on it.
Funny bit is that I messed up ordering the kit at work so it's in my name meaning I can technically buy the kit off of them and they can get on a business plan without a waiting list or using the overpriced "authorized providers".
Are those prices in USD, or a local currency? (Apologies for not knowing which local currency to ask about; it seems that Zimbabwe changed currency recently and no longer uses the Zimbabwean Dollar?)
I'm guessing the local currency as Zimbabwe's GDP per capita is $2,005, so salaries have to be lower. I doubt anyone could afford to pay 30% of their yearly income on an internet connection :-)
