Lower Probability James Glanz will continue his attack on Data Centers, NYTimes dismantles Environmental Reporting Group

James Glanz NYTimes articles attacking the data center industry made quite the rounds in the data center community.

THE CLOUD FACTORIES

Power, Pollution and the Internet

Ethan Pines for The New York Times

Data centers are filled with servers, which are like bulked-up desktop computers, minus screens and keyboards, that contain chips to process data.

It's been months waiting for the series to continue.  But, guess what the NYtimes has dismantled its environmental reporting group.

The New York Times’s decision is to dismantle its four-year-old environment “pod” has been called everything from “an unmitigated disaster” to potentially “a good thing.”

In fact, a lot remains to be seen. InsideClimate News reporter Katherine Bagley broke the story on Friday and quoted Times managing editor Dean Baquet insisting that the change is structural and that the paper remains as committed to environmental coverage as ever. But he and other top editors haven’t provided many details about what that means.

Over the next few weeks, the environment pod’s two editors and seven reporters will be reassigned to other desks, including, presumably, Science, National, Business, and Foreign, but word in the newsroom is that few, if any, people know where they’re headed. It’s also unclear what will happen to the Green blog, though Baquet has said, “If it has impact and audience it will survive.”

Will someone else carry the torch to attack the evil data centers who pollute the world?

Facebook Graph Search triggers withdrawal for some

ReadWrite has a post by Matt Assay on his withdrawal from Facebook which ironical has 104 Facebook Likes.

In rolling out its new Graph Search, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to caution that "it's going to take years to index the whole map of the graph."  That's great.  It gives me time to completely remove myself from Facebook.

When I dropped off Facebook a few weeks ago, it wasn't in pursuit of some grand, moral crusade.  I was simply trying to show solidarity with my 13-year old son, who had become obsessed (addicted?) to a massively multiplayer game played on Facebook. When I took away his Facebook privileges in an attempt to help him kick the habit, I decided that a hiatus from Facebook would do me some good, too, and would show him that I wasn't asking him to give up something that I, too, wasn't willing to abandon.  

Little did I suspect the incredible relief that would come from cutting out Facebook and Instagram from my life. (I kept Twitter, however, as it has become a useful business tool for me.)

What is Matt's option.  Hang out.  Hang out not in Google+, but with real friends.

In sum, I'm enjoying my life sans Facebook, and I imagine I'll enjoy it even more now that Facebook wants to make it even easier to invade my personal space without real value in return. Maybe it will be useful for dating, but I have zero interest in this.

I just want a place to hang out with real friends. It turns out that there's an even better place to do this than Facebook. It's called "the real world."

Facebook and Open Compute disrupt the Server Market

Stacey Higginbotham has a post on Facebook/Open Compute's announcement that disrupts the server market.

Sitting next to Stacey I get a chance to see what she is going to write before it posts and she does a good job of summarizing Frank Frankovsky's opening keynote.

Facebook and Open Compute just blew up the server and disrupted a $55B market

 

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Frank Frankovsky of Facebook holding an Applied Micro board.
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
SUMMARY:

Facebook took aim at the hardware business back in April 2011 with the launch of the Open Compute open hardware program, and Wednesday is fired the killing blow at the $55 billion server business.

The launch of two new features into the Open Compute hardware specifications on Wednesday has managed to do what Facebook has been threatening to do since it began building its vanity-free hardware back in 2010. The company has blown up the server — reducing it to interchangeable components.

With this step it has disrupted the hardware business from the chips all the way up to the switches. It has also killed the server business, which IDC estimates will bring in $55 billion in revenue for 2012.

Open Compute Jan 2013, momentum builds

At the Open Compute Summit, there are 1,900 attendees, three times that last event in San Antonio.

So, what is new?

Frank's beard is bigger.  Frank is the founder of the Open Compute Project.

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Yet some things don't change with Frank he is still in tennis shoes, jeans, and plaid shirt.

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I got a chance to chat with Frank briefly before the conference and the board is spending a lot of time thinking about how to keep the momentum.  

Just walking in the door I saw a dozen good friends and met a couple of new people.

I'll have a lot more to write over the next few days.