cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15187023

Tom Mohan

May. 6, 2024 10:10 am

Thanks to Erin Jordan for her informative and alarming April 28 article, “Google data center would be among Cedar Rapids’ largest water and energy user.“ So now Google wants to take our water?

I believe like many Iowans, that clean water is a human right. It must be available and affordable for all. And it ought to be used wisely, sustainably and for the benefit of all.

Google is one of the largest and most profitable multinational corporations in the world. It wants to draw perhaps up to a million gallons of water daily from our city water supply to cool their behemoth complex. I say perhaps because we don’t really know because they haven’t made public their plans. And they want to do this during a historic drought. A drought over three and a half years old which the Department of Natural Resources has labeled the longest in Iowa since the 1950s.

As Jordan points out, how will this affect residential water rates? How will it deplete our city and statewide water resources? For me, it also comes down to whose interest is being served here. Are our increasingly precious water resources being used for the public good or for private, corporate gain? This sure seems reckless and irresponsible to me. Will their Silicon Valley dreams evaporate into Death Valley days for all of us soon? Surely, our decision-makers can do better than this!

Tom Mohan

Cedar Rapids

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The major takeaways of this work are:

(1) For specific workloads, clusters of repurposed phones are cheaper and more carbon efficient than traditional servers.

(2) More broadly, scavenging unwanted equipment shows excellent potential for building economic and carbon-efficient systems, especially when renewable energy is plentiful.

(3) Sustainability has operational and manufacturing facets; manufacturing dominates as operating trends towards zero with cleaner energy mixes.

(4) Accurate LCA information is essential for carbon-based analyses; it would be beneficial if more ICT manufacturers published this information, including cloud providers who build custom systems. Our work highlights the need for more holistic analyses of the environmental impact of computing. With the substantial carbon cost of manufacturing and the difficulties of responsible recycling, the energy efficiency of a device may be the least significant component of its environmental and human impact.

"Tesla Is Reportedly Revoking Internship Offers to College Students Weeks Before Their Start Dates: 'I Spent Thousands On Housing'"

• https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/112394551768481505
• https://stackoverflow.co/company/press/archive/openai-partnership

Elon Musk became the butt of more than a few jokes after internet users pointed out Tesla’s robot demo wasn’t all it appeared to be. As it turns out, a video the billionaire posted of Optimus, the company’s much-hyped humanoid robot, was actually being controlled by a human slightly off-screen. And it’s interesting to see robot manufacturers now include assurances in their videos that they’re not doing the same deceptive magic trick as Musk.

Really cool blog post with beautiful photos and starts with a fun and interesting intro, here captured in an image for the the tl;dr but-want-to-comment-anyway among you :

40 years ago today: I joined a tiny startup called Sun Microsystems. What a ride! Here’s the never-before-told story of how I arrived at Sun as employee #8! 🧵

https://mastodon.social/@aka_pugs/112377469328654484