I have been worrying about servers melting the polar ice caps and global weirding since I landed on social media...
I have been worrying about servers melting the polar ice caps and global weirding since I landed on social media fluff. Infinitely more so when, in a time of minimalism and decluttering, people are determined to move every last little scrap of dead G+ to a new home.
Time for a digital detox. For me certainly. Cape Town's electricity is mostly from polluting coal-fired power stations up north. We have been tipped back into loadshedding, and hugely grateful that pumped storage hydroelectricity can usually scrape us thru.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
Time for a digital detox. For me certainly. Cape Town's electricity is mostly from polluting coal-fired power stations up north. We have been tipped back into loadshedding, and hugely grateful that pumped storage hydroelectricity can usually scrape us thru.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
Hi Diana Studer. It is certainly true that most data centers are tremendously wasteful from an energy perspective. Google, however, has done a tremendous amount of work to minimize their energy consumption and to remain "green." They deserve a lot of credit for the progress they have made in that area.
ReplyDeleteJohn Skeats Especially DeepMind deserves lots of credit!
ReplyDeleteRafael Espericueta Google's accomplishments in that area are much bigger than just DeepMind. I believe that they have whole data centers that are completely carbon-neutral, and some that are actually giving back. I don't remember which data center it is, but they have one in the US that uses raw sewage from a local municipal sewage processing plant to reduce their energy demands -- and returns the sewage to the plant in a cleaner state than it was originally, thereby reducing costs at the municipal sewage processing plant, as well!
ReplyDeleteAlso solar energy in the Northern Cape at Jasper. thesouthafrican.com - Google Invests $12 million in Northern Cape Solar Project
ReplyDeleteIMHO: Google is evil for what it's doing to faithful contributors via Google+, and YouTube, and the whole ecosystem. That said, I've heard of both great and not-so great successes at their addressing their "carbon footprint". All I would add is: What do you think drives the telescoping demand for data centers, besides (a) the profit in them there "clouds" (subscription /storage fees) and (b) our never-ending connection to data and screens!! Cit: http://www.devicedevotion.com
ReplyDeleteMichael Fenichel a rather nastier footprint than hiring a locked garage just to store the extra stuff we don't need or want. This is digital stuff we don't look at or even remember that we have. Mostly.
ReplyDeleteI am on a delete delete delete mission.
Just testing. My migrated comments go to my G+ profile.
ReplyDeleteAnd this one?
Thanks for testing, Diana Studer! Evidently these have not been set up as moderated comments. I'll fix that today. Your comment appeared in my Gmail and (so far as I know)not in my G+ profile.
Delete