this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You (www.wired.com)
submitted 2 months ago by nutellawaescher@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 2 months ago (4 children)

tldr

If the internet is 175 x 1024^7 bytes, that’s 960,947 grams’ worth of DNA. That’s the same as 10.6 American males. Or one third of a Cybertruck. Or 64,000 strawberries.

Anything but metric.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There is literally "grams" in that sentence

[–] My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Those were amerigrams

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Anything but metric.

You literally said "960,947 grams"

That's ~961kg; 39kg short of one metric ton.

[–] tofubl@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

...of DNA

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago

A byte has to be weighed against something equivalent. DNA is a fantastic constant representation of physical data.

[–] Schorsch@feddit.org 5 points 2 months ago

wow I'm so shocked I can't contain my excitement *yawn*

Does it get more clickbaity than this?

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is fantastically dumb. Why would they convert bytes into DNA? That is literally not how the internet works. It's just an arbitrary, hypothetical storage method.

Can't they convert it into hard drives? That would be better but it would still ignore all the hardware used to run the hard drives, connect them, etc.

Terrible article.

archive: https://archive.is/XAt3S