Technology

A week of downtime and all the servers were recovered only because the customer had a proper disaster recovery protocol and held backups somewhere else, otherwise Google deleted the backups too

Google cloud ceo says "it won't happen anymore", it's insane that there's the possibility of "instant delete everything"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15454966

Banana Pi BPI-F3: Single-board computer and RISV-V alternative to the Raspberry Pi now available

The tool is nearly ready to be released, Zuckerman told Ars, but the University of Massachusetts Amherst associate professor is afraid that Facebook owner Meta might threaten legal action if he goes ahead. And his fears appear well-founded. In 2021, Meta sent a cease-and-desist letter to the creator of the original Unfollow Everything, Louis Barclay, leading that developer to shut down his tool after thousands of Facebook users had eagerly downloaded it.

Zuckerman is suing Meta, asking a US district court in California to invalidate Meta's past arguments against developers like Barclay and rule that Meta would have no grounds to sue if he released his tool.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15421429

Global car giants seek tech allies in China's cutthroat EV market

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

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.

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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"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