For the 2nd or 3rd time this week I've seen someone comment on a new data centre build with a stat about how 80% of data is never accessed. Then they talk about the energy and cooling used in modern DCs.
The reality is that data storage is actually incredibly efficient, and uses fuck all power. A hard disk is less than 10w and stores multiple users data.
Storing data, our photos, our memories, our history. Is not the problem.
The thing driving the need for the bigger more power and water hungry data centres is AI. Sparkling autocarrot. Where as a machine in a rack full of hard disks might consume a couple of hundred watts. A machine loaded up with a typical load of 8 "AI accelerators" can be pulling in the region of 5kw. Over an order of magnitude more power than the energy needed to store the lifes photos of hundreds of people.
Storing our data, our memories, our photos, on servers in data centres that are built in sensible places isn't inherently a bad thing. And we shouldn't allow ourselves to fall for the trope of 80% of it is never accessed. But building datacentres that use ten times the energy, and need even more water, in deserts, and water stressed areas, to drive sparkling autocarrot that noone asked for. That we should be more vocal about.
Just did a Google image search as part of some research into something in the medieval era. Well over half of the results are from some kind of ai image generation site. Argh. Totally useless for research purposes.
Search engines need an "exclude AI content" option.
@quixoticgeek
I'm given to understand that you can limit your query by date to before AI images were an issue, and there are other tricks to try as well, if you really must use Google Image Search.
Once again for the people at the back. The purpose of public transport is to transport the public. Making money from doing so is a secondary purpose at best.
Noone talks about the profitability of the motorway network. So why do we do the same for public transport?
@quixoticgeek "We are very smart people and are playing small business with public services. Markets are better at everything." said a Dutch person while standing at an out of busstop that just went out of service.
We have an utterly fucked up idea of what counts as technology. Something that projects many of our biases including gender, and race.
To many these days it's only technology if it's electronic, and used by western men. But to take such a narrow definition is to ignore the amazing technology that surrounds us, and upon which our society is built. As such. It's time for a thread. I'm gonna talk about two different items you use every day, and the technology that goes into them.
Unless you happen to be sat naked on a warm beach somewhere, you're probably wearing clothes as you read this. Have you ever stopped to think about how we got to the very probably woven cotton clothing you're wearing right now ?
Archimedes said there are three basic machines, the lever, pulley, and screw. In the renaissance the wheel and axle, the wedge and the inclined plane were added to the list. But I think something else should be added, a discovery that changed humanity.
Why then does weaving move from women's work to men's work? Because now with a two bar loom fabric can be made a lot faster, and it can be made wider. This allows for it to be made at a larger scale, & crucially, for it to be something one can do professionally. As soon as a technology can be used to provide an income to support a family, it moves from women's work, to men's work. We see this throughout history. See also computer programming. Once we valued it more, the white men took over
When it rains after a prolonged period of dry weather, there is a smell created. It's called Petrichor. A wonderful word, and utterly useless trivia item. The smell is caused by something call Geosmin, which is produced by bacteria in the soil. Humans can smell it at 5 parts per TRILLION. In contrast Sharks can detect blood at concentrations of 1 part per million. On this one substance, we have a better sense of smell than sharks do for blood. Humans are amazing!
@filobus you're on the savanna. It's not rained in a moon. And then you smell something. Something on the wind. Maybe that way to fresh grass and hopefully something to hunt...
@quixoticgeek
It is a wonderful word, and phenomenon.
The generation of petrichor was first described by Australian scientists Isabel (Joy) Bear and Richard Thomas in Nature journal in 1964. They were working for the national scientific and industrial organisation (the CSIRO) at the time.
Inspired in a way by a certain long discussion by a well known Sci-fi author about the announcement of a Nuclear powered container ship from China. I wanna talk about "technology won't save us" When it comes to climate change.
"Technology won't save us" is the usual refrain when someone mentions Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). CCS is often touted by the fossil fuel industry as a way of us being able to keep burning dinosaurs. Continue our lives unchanged...
Heat pumps are an amazing technology. They are essentially a very large fridge run in reverse. If you want to know more about them, Technology Connections on Youtube has some great videos explaining how they work. They are absolutely brilliant, and combined with better insulation, they are going to allow us to heat our homes and offices with 100% renewable electricity cheaply and efficiently. Alas there's a lot of FUD out there from those who make a living from boilers.
With energy from renewables we can power the industrial processes (ammonia, cement, steel), heat our homes and offices. All without destroying our environment. There's no excuses anymore. We know what we need to do. We have the technologies we need to do it (OK, except for cement). As William Gibson said. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. It's time to distribute things a bit more evenly. Some technologies won't save us. But these ones. These are critical to our survival.15/15
@quixoticgeek If cars were invented today they wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the public. But they're so ingrained it feels like an impossible battle to push back against them even slightly
I was living and biking in Amsterdam when ebikes became common, and those things are shit scary, because they ride on the bike path, they make almost no noise, and they are traveling much, much faster than the speed limit for powered vehicles on the bike path, 25km/hr.
(Except in the center, there is no speed limit on conventional bicycles. 😁 )
High speed powered vehicles have no place on the bike paths, and I strongly applaud this move.
The postoffice horizon scandal in the UK has put the spotlight on the coding practices of Fujitsu.
With the publishing of some code snippets, several people who have looked at it have replied "Wow, are they paid by the line of code?"
Which, while often meant as a joke, has some basis in history, and it opens up the discussion, of how do you incentivise programmers and how do you judge their achievements for the basis of bonues?
With the modern age of version control systems and the like, we see managers using things like number of commits to git. Or new features added. Etc...
Which on the face of it sounds great. Except you encourage people with your bonus structure to write more, to add to the code base. This doesn't make for the best quality of code base.
To quote the bankers after 2008. "The incentives were wrong".
... have kept the evidence necessary to cover their arse. The same way that in the volkswagen emissions scandel. The only person who saw a prison cell in the whole VW fuckup, which increased pollution and harmed us all. Is one engineer. Noone in management. Noone who set the goals for the project. And I fear it will be the same for Fujitsu.
And all of it. From the top, to the bottom of the program comes down to one simple problem.
Yesterday I had a bit of an explore of some of the Barcelona superblocks and pedestrian areas.
One of the things I really liked was just how well provided with seating they are. In many places I've visited the only seating is either in commercial places, or it was just rare. Here it was numerous, and varied.
Something else that comes up a lot when we talk about this sort of infra is "what about deliveries?"
No problem. The street is open for delivery traffic. At 10kph. 1/n
Something else I really liked about the area I walked through was the frequent availability of drinking water taps. A little phallic in design. A contrast from the minimalist designs I'm used to in the Netherlands. They were every few blocks. It was interesting seeing how people used them. Some filled bottles, others just washed their hands and arms, allowing the drying water to cool them in the heat.
I tried this, as well as running my feet under the tap. I works really well. 3/n
At one point I saw a guy laying on a bench in the shade. His arm over his eyes to keep out the light. In the middle of the day. That's when it also struck me. There's no hostile architecture (at least that I noticed) here. It's not like some parks in the UK where the benches have dividers installed to stop people sleeping on them.
Public space. Without a paywall. And away from the traffic.
I honestly don't understand how anyone can be opposed to developments like these.
5/5
Ok now I'm kinda curious. when you started at your current job. How long from when you arrived, did it take for you to be fully onboarded to the IT systems Enough to do your job?
English Uni 3, Dec 2020. 10am, go to IT, get laptop, log in, twiddle Windows/MS Office, all working.
English uni 2, May 2018, borrowing various laptops for a while (we were part uni part not uni), sometimes needed a full-time colleague to log in to make it speak to my login but generally worked straight off.
English uni 1, Aug 2008, immediate access on any Pc in the uni. I got a RAM upgrade in week 3 for 5 people by asking IT nicely for me and IT realised we all needed it.
Overhearing my housemate's phone call with their employers IT support. Knowing how to fix, it, but also refusing to do free support for a multi billion dollar company.