

What can hackers do for the environment? - schtog

I like mathematics and computer science and there is where my strengths are.
But I have lately found that things outside the CS-sphere interest me more.
Tesla(electric cars), solar power etc. Environmental stuff in general.<p>So what can a hacker do for the environment? And I mean on a big scale not just sorting your garbage :) (I already do that anyway).
Thing is the computer business uses loads of energy.<p>Hardware guys can:
Invent chips, processors etc that run computers using less energy
What can software guys do?<p>Sidenote:
I started working on a solar power search engine/prize comparer, anyone think that could be made profitbale?
There already are some pretty good ones though naturally but they are lacking and more towards green stuff in general.
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SwellJoe
Working on the assumption that making small changes to the largest number of
offenders has a bigger impact than making a huge change to a few devices,
we're working on making virtualization easier and more manageable. Millions of
computers in data centers are sitting idle _right now_ , and they're burning
power at 30-80% the rate of a computer doing real work. So, let's get the jobs
they're doing consolidated down to a few virtual machines that spin up when
they're needed (or run all the time, but when they're idle, other virtual
machines on the same physical device can be doing work).

Halving the number of machines in a data center, even if the number and size
of disks spinning and amount of memory stays the same (and we're assuming that
CPUs aren't working full-time, and just need to be fast enough and plentiful
enough to answer all queries quickly), will dramatically reduce power and
cooling requirements for that data center. So, it's sort of a CFL model. A
virtual machine is a drop in replacement for a dedicated server, but burns
remarkably less power for the same amount of usage.

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noodle
i feel like something that software guys can do is find out ways to make
telecommuting work more viable for the masses (where viable -- factory workers
can't really take part), not just tech workers.

it already _is_ viable, but its not quite that accessible and easy to do for
the non-tech-savvy.

this would help to remove the reliance we have upon driving long distances
every day for work and help relieve some of our pollution, energy and oil
problems.

its not a cure-all, but there isn't one. incremental steps will help fix our
problem.

