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What can hackers do for the environment?

3 points by schtog ↗ HN
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.

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.

Hardware guys can: Invent chips, processors etc that run computers using less energy What can software guys do?

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.

2 comments

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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.

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.