Except that this little tree hugger scenario (i.e. greening up Linode) doesn't fix anything.

It's like bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon.

Go fix China and the rest of the 3rd world instead of picking at the low hanging (and completely inefficient) fruit here in the states.

But thanks for commenting - I think "utter irrational nonsense" will be the name of my new band. So put your hands together for U.....I.....N. Yeaaaaaaaaaa <clap clap woohoo clap clap>

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 > 0.

It's not difficult.

Even if Linode went out of their way to make sure that they offset their energy footprint (they would have to get their DC's to use green energy or maybe pay to get some green energy made that exceed the energy they use), it would still not matter.

Data centers use less than 2 % of the worlds energy according to http://www.koomey.com/post/8323374335

Of that, a part goes to cooling, and another part goes to lights, heating and other standard things in a DC. And finally, there is the power that actually goes to the servers.

Of this, the datacenter control the first 2 leaving Linode to the last part. Except if they want to switch DCs. They did in fact switch from FMT1 to FMT2. Not sure if that changed anything in the power usage or where the power come from in Fremont.

The part Linode effectively can control is what hardware they use and how much power that consumes. And as stated before, it makes sense for them to look at those numbers.

For example, going from Intel Xeon L5520 (http://ark.intel.com/products/40201/Int ... -Intel-QPI) with a power consumption of 0.75 V - 1.35 V to Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 (http://ark.intel.com/products/75277/Int ... e-2_80-GHz) at 0.65 V to 1.3 V saves a tiny bit of power.

And manufacturers generally do have focus on reducing power usage, so I'm sure other components have gone down in power usage as well. Maybe most note-worthy the switch from SAS 15K RPM to SSD since the SSD doesn't contain any moving parts.

With that said, we haven't taken into account the resources needed to create all those things. And that's where it may be more effective to fix things in China first. If they get fixed in China, we'll save a huge amount of energy.

If we get more people to use public transport rather than driving a car alone on the highway, we'd save a huge amount of energy as well.

But doing more than already is being done (because it makes sense financially) in this area would be a waste of time compared to other areas where the effect would be bigger.

With that being said, I do understand the problems associated with the climate, and I do not say we should stop research in this area. But we should focus on the areas that matter.

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lakridserne
Serverfruit - shared and managed VPS hosting, SSL certificates and domains
Awesome servers rented from Linode!

So we agree, any effort here would be nothing but a insignificant rounding error, yet end up costing Linode and it's customers more money.

Thanks for making my point clearer.

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Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

Actually not; I was just demonstrating the insanity of your "argument" in the abstract, not making a statement as to how it applies in this particular case.


Better than people dying from the effects of climate change.

So if you could, you would make Linode double the cost for everyone with all Linodes just to fix a very, very small part of the energy problems? Have you read my post above?



Every minute you spent here arguing that we all should essentially double our costs in order to satisfy you, you can't spend actually making a difference. Every minute you don't make a difference in one of the big areas, more people will die because of it.

I don't disagree with doing things for the climate, however, I believe you should go ahead and do things where it actually makes a difference. Such as getting more people to use public transport instead of driving in their own car 1 person.

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lakridserne
Serverfruit - shared and managed VPS hosting, SSL certificates and domains
Awesome servers rented from Linode!

BerenErchamion,
Do you only use green or renewable energy? How about your home? Your vehicle(s)? Are you only using pubic transportation? Are you petitioning your local busses or trains to use only green or renewable energy? How about your employer? Your ISP? Your local government offices?

The point is that you should start at home and change what you can. If everyone who was as dedicated to this cause as you are worked at the local level to change their communities then with enough of a grass roots effort they can start making real changes.

As far as Linode is concerned, if you want to use a "green" hosting company then find one and vote with your dollars. I'm sure the expenses are significant and they could use as many like-minded customers as they can get. Supporting a company that already shares your positions is easier than trying to convert a company that doesn't currently operate the way you wish they would.