Clouds and VPSes [LWN.net]

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 7:30 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743)
In reply to: Clouds and VPSes by wtarreau
Parent article: Fedora considers deprecating legacy BIOS

> But surely I'm wrong on all that line and it's normal to trash perfectly working hardware, I'm the only one concerned about e-waste

That would be insecure working hardware, connected to the network that requires more "power" than current solutions, which adds to the environmental problem.

The people/companies that live by a concept called "carbon footprint" installed by the oil companies as part of an deceptive PR campaigns [1] on their behalf, the biggest one in history and claim that they care about the environment should not be buying/using anything involving computers,solar panels, tv's etc since in the devices manufacturing process is an chemical ( that is among few that was conveniently left out of the Kyoto Protocol international climate change agreement ) called Nitrogen Trifluoride(NF3) is being used.

"The gas is 17,000 times more potent as a global warming agent than a similar mass of carbon dioxide. It survives in the atmosphere about five times longer than carbon dioxide" [2]
It's use increases as the world is being deliberately pushed into adopting more technology as can be clearly seen in the market projections for the chemical [3].

People wont like what I'm about to say but the fact is we are way beyond point of no return for our planet at this point so if people genuenly care about the environment then they should disconnect, find another line of work and go and live like an Amish in the literal sense and figuring out solution that a) change the worlds economy in an instant and b) reduce the human population because *none* of the solution out there fix anything ( but they do produce profit ), at best they just delay it.

This whole act of people pretenting to be "green" to ease their environmental guilt which has been installed by their government in conjunction with the oil companies and an trillion dollar environmental industry is just ridiculous.

1. https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign...
2. https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/potent-greenhouse-gas-more-...
3. https://www.marketquest.biz/report/108079/global-nitrogen...

to post comments

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 8:49 UTC (Mon) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (6 responses)

While I agree that them term carbon footprint can be misleading, some of your other points are off the mark. NF3 has been regulated under the Kyoto Protocol since 2012, largely as a result of the the research you're referring to. Its total radiative forcing compared to CO2 is rounding error. It's something to monitored, but hardly a major issue.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trifluoride#Greenh...
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/transparency-and-...

Perfect is the enemy of good. If we only accept perfect solutions we'll never get anywhere.

I don't disagree with your sentiment that we're already basically screwed, but I don't think that's an excuse to just give up completely.

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 17:36 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (5 responses)

> Perfect is the enemy of good. If we only accept perfect solutions we'll never get anywhere.

It's not like we are getting anywhere without the solutions being perfect now is it.

And it's not like the real/perfect solutions aren't known as in changing the world's economy and reduce the human population, they just cant be realistically implemented, well technically they can the former will never be allowed to happen and the latter never be socially accepted.

> I don't disagree with your sentiment that we're already basically screwed,

Biodiversity, polution in earth, water and air yup we are pretty fucked.

> but I don't think that's an excuse to just give up completely.

True we can always hope that good size meteor hits the planet.

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 18:22 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

Well, iirc the prediction (in 1980) for the millenium world population was 12Bn, and if we were unbelievably lucky it might be only 8Bn. What's the current figure?

To the best of my knowledge, we've undershot pretty much every prediction since, and the forecast for 2100 or 2150 is only 3Bn ...

Populations naturally boom and bust, and it looks like we might be hitting bust, luckily for Earth ...

Cheers,
Wol

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 19:08 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (1 responses)

Well it's not like the human population will stop breeding tomorrow despite the genderless generation's attempt to put a dent in the population growth rate and the fact is we kinda need a meteor like right now, not 50+ years from now.

And who does not want to go out in a blaze of glory of kinetic energy = mass/2 * velocity^2

It sure beats dying of old age doesn't it...

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 22:13 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Well, for a start a repeat of Tunguska over Stal (sorry, Put)'s palace might be a good idea ... let's hope the universe obliges ...

Cheers,
Wol

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 26, 2022 12:50 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

This is not a population bust in the biological boom/bust sense. These are caused by starvation or predator pressure. What we are seeing almost worldwide is the voluntary reduction of breeding rates in order to focus more resources on fewer offspring. This is largely because this is what women want, but also because there is an economic incentive: in poverty-stricken rural areas children become a source of free labour fairly fast as they grow up, so you can use one round of children to help fund the next, and having *lots* is to a certain degree beneficial to all of them. In cities they are and remain a substantial cost to the whole family, including any older children. So it's beneficial to have fewer.

(There is probably also something related to falling death rates: if you know that most of your children will survive, you'll have fewer. But the economic incentive is substantial even in the absence of that.)

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 27, 2022 1:33 UTC (Wed) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

There is also the concept of children taking care of the elderly in poor areas, which is less needed in places where we have pensions.

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 14:20 UTC (Mon) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link] (1 responses)

> reduce the human population because *none* of the solution out there fix anything ( but they do produce profit ), at best they just delay it. This whole act of people pretenting to be "green" to ease their environmental guilt which has been installed by their government in conjunction with the oil companies and an trillion dollar environmental industry is just ridiculous.

This actually is the part I agree with :-)

Note that I wasn't doing some greenwashing, just explaining that I'm not seeing any reason to trash perfectly working hardware (which comes with costs and waste) just for the sake of making some developers' life easier when they claim that may hardware is dead.

Clouds and VPSes

Posted Apr 25, 2022 15:31 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Yup.

Running costs are only part of the equation. How much environmental damage is done and making new and disposing of obsolete hardware? Surely the extra costs of running old hardware may well be cheaper ...

Much as I dislike the waste-to-power plant just down the road (and even more so because we're a poor East London borough having all of posh West London's waste dumped on us), the fact is that is very environmentally friendly - it means a load of waste is converted efficiently to energy and CO2 rather than inefficiently converted to methane ... and it leaves a load of oil/coal unmined and in the ground.

If you're being green, you need to look at the big picture, not just minimise your costs at the expense of creating even bigger costs elsewhere (cough cough the government pricing our steel industry out of existence cough cough).

Cheers,
Wol