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

Opinion content represents the viewpoint of the author or The Gazette editorial board. You can join the conversation by submitting a letter to the editor or guest column or by suggesting a topic for an editorial to editorial@thegazette.com

"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.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/79634

cross-posted from: https://jorts.horse/users/fathermcgruder/statuses/112378811040247396

#StarTrekIRL

Took my daughter for a blood draw today and we got to use a vein visualization device for the first time. It wasn't this exact model, but it was pretty similar: https://christiemed.com/products/veinviewer-models/veinviewer-vision2/

Maybe I'm just basic, but I was really impressed. Apparently it uses an infrared camera to see the patient's blood vessels and then it uses a projector to display them on the patient's skin so that the phlebotomist has an easier time finding a good blood vessel. Brilliant!

@crosspost

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

HouseFresh (an affiliate website owned by a SEO agency) are complaining they've virtually disappeared from Google Search results due to factors including "keyword swarming" (multiple pages / articles on the same topic published on multiple sites owned by the same competitor publisher) - this is as old as the hills but Google could improve SERPs by reading the business sections of the newspapers