Google Cloud (Europe-west2) is experiencing downtime
status.cloud.google.com
status.cloud.google.com
I think it's deceptive to say it's a single zone. We have VMs across three zones, but anything stateful on zone a is stranded, we can't get the volumes back. It's not just that the zone is down, it's that services are not easy to fail out of the impacted zone or move that's the problem.
Kind on implies regional isn't good enough to secure high availability. You need multi regional deployments. Good luck with that when the bill comes due.
Kinsta: https://status.kinsta.com/
SiteGround: https://twitter.com/siteground/status/1270492907078914052?la...
Both having same issue
I assume this is due to the heatwave - the UK has broken temperature records today, hitting over 40°C (104°F) in London for the first time.
Oracle Cloud is suffering similar outages due to cooling infrastructure issues: https://ocistatus.oraclecloud.com/
Imagine being on your phone tweeting, instagram stories, whatsapp messages in the blistering weather while the databases and servers receiving and delivering data sits comfortably in AC cooled buildings. Does anybody find this contrast just eerie?
Most places have emissions requirements for vehicles and so forth. Maybe some day we'll demand energy-efficient programming.
Today cloud providers deliberately site their facilities to make use of the cheapest tax-free electricity, which is effectively tax dodging.
I would also tax personal data. Current regulatory framework strangely assumes that personal data has no value yet entire companies are built around monetizing and claiming it as theirs. Those companies are also the biggest consumers of these DCs.
Even by taxing personal data that is being used by companies, you could realize significant energy savings as they have to discern between what they need and what they dont. Asking for someones driver license to verify their account? Tax them yearly. Suddenly companies that dont really need it find themselves searching for more energy efficient solutions since their tax dollars depend on this activity.
Unfortunately, we may not see this happen for quite some time.
Nearly all compute power in the world is used doing things that theoretically take no compute. The reason they use so much compute is it was easier to pay for that compute than pay some engineer to figure out how to use less.
I've been trying to minimise redundant calculations in our CI/CD workflows, but none of our tools seem to like that.
Docker rebuilds all downstream if one bit of a step changes, GitHub Actions doesn't let you cache on local runners and requires uploading everything to their size-limited cloud cache.
I'm looking for better ways but of course no service advertises their energy efficiency. That tells something about the industry's priorities.
(rather than actual)
So they ought to be able to still keep some services up for some users.
They should have already practiced that as part of their emergency procedures, because they'd need to do the same is they had a severe limit on power use (eg. Due to a nationwide electricity or fuel shortage).
Wouldn't that depend on what exactly broke here? If the cooling of the power system failed, they might end up without power for example, impacting everything.
https://www.rivm.nl/en/news/smog-alert-in-force-throughout-n...
> if europe was hotter
How do you suggest achieving that? Other than global warming?
Besides, in the early XXth century, it was okay to vent CFC into the atmosphere. We didn't know that it destroyed the ozone layer. What makes you think that we won't discover something similar about isobutane in a few decades, besides wishful thinking?
They are sealed systems. They only emit gasses when breached. Or when not properly disposed of.
> And of course, the AC unit itself heats the city
A few watts - whatever power it requires to operate. Say it uses 1.5kw. That's the max it will heat up the city. It will of course move 4x this amount of heat(maybe more!), being a heat pump. But the 'new' heat is only what's imported by the power grid. The rest of the heat was already in the city.
It's also worth noting that it's often quite sunny when it's hot. If you power AC units with sunlight, you are actually not introducing any more heat to the system at all. That sunlight would already hit your city and be converted into heat, if you use some of it to move heat around, you are not increasing the overall heat level.
And mechanical devices having leaks is a folklore tale told to scare children?
> A few watts - whatever power it requires to operate. Say it uses 1.5kw. That's the max it will heat up the city.
Yeah. 1500W. Times the number of AC units in the city. That's what adds up to the temperature difference between the city and the countryside.
> If you power AC units with sunlight...
...with a solar panel above your own home, with no inefficiency in the electrical grid, the solar panel, or the AC unit itself. Please, this isn't a high school physics exam, you can't assume that there is no friction or that the AC unit is spherical. This is real life.
No, most of the difference is albedo difference meaning urban areas capture more radiant solar energy.
Aircons in cars tend to need regassed every one or two years. (I'm not sure why car aircons need regassed more often than domestic aircons.)
Do AC units emit these gases? Aren't you mixing up CO2 from electricity production and gases that stay internal to the unit?