Covid is accelerating the decline of pulp and paper which is better for the environment

WaPo has an article on the closing of a pulp and paper mill in Wisconsin.

A warning from Wisconsin

Wisconsin sells more paper, employs more people and has more paper mills than any other state. The industry was already in decline, but the coronavirus delivered a death blow.

30 years ago I was fanatically working on typography and the focus was the end product, the printed page. Type on the screen, the fonts you used to create were temporarily representations of your end product what you print and give to others. At the beginning of desktop publishing, printing was absolutely necessary. Three years later, it hit that why spend all kinds of effort doing things to preserve the ways of the past. The future was fonts for the screen, and started talking about the idea and eventually it got to Bill Gates and he loved the idea which then came back down to me as why did I tell Bill my idea. I did not tell Bill, the idea went on its own.

And now it is all about the screen. Printing is such a low priority. And with Covid you print only for your own use. You no longer print and distribute copies in a meeting. The distribution is electronic. And so much of the impactful content as shifted video which you cannot print.

Creating new ideas that shake up an industry is part of good problem solving. And I love problem solving.

Time to start writing again. Greening the Data Center Assets is the next step

I started writing about green data centers before anyone was using the term. No ones data center strategy was carbon neutral. Now Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and even Amazon has a carbon neutral strategy. It is so obvious now that the right thing for these big companies is to make the effort to lead the industry and be carbon neutral.

Given this acceptance I got bored covering the industry. It has been interesting watching each company change. Green peace and NYtimes articles putting pressure on the companies.

This morning on a walk with my dogs. It hit me. The next step is the greening of the data center assets in the data center. Electrical, Mechanical and other equipment is 50% of the cost of the data center and no one knows if that equipment is made in a carbon neutral environment. The IT equipment can be 5 to 10 times the cost of the DC over the life of the DC. Is it carbon neutral. Most likely not.

Now that the data center energy use is carbon neutral it’s time to look at the things in the data center. It look 10 years for the green data center to be an accepted term.

Greening of the data center assets is next step.

Intel achieves 1 billion gallons of water restored on its way to 100% goal

Intel has a. post on its achievement of 1 billion gallons of water restored.

Intel Reaches 1 Billion Gallons of Water Restored

Marking a Significant Milestone in the Company’s Goal to Restore 100% of Global Water Use

Below is a Youtube video which at time I wrote this post had only 25 views. So many people do not care about water as a critical part of being green and sustainable.

80% of the water used be returned to the watershed. 20% is gone in evaporative cooling which you could say it is returned in the form of water vapor into the atmosphere.

Intel does not say what % of the way they are in achieving their goal of restoring 100% of their water use, but they have hit a major milestone with 1 billion gallons. For more information you can go to their web site here https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/environment/water-restoration.html

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Google's hidden secret to making data center's better, an Esprit de Corps commitment to Green Data Centers

Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure has a nice post on its Data Centers are more efficient than ever.

We’ll continue to deploy new technologies and share the lessons we learn in the process, design the most efficient data centers possible, and disclose data on our progress.

I saw this post last week and have had a bit of time to think what is there is more than most can see. There is a pattern of behavior that has been going on. 12 years ago in 2008 I had a chance to chat with Urs and wrote this post on uncloaking its ways of PUE.

What is nice about being Green, being more efficient, saving energy is it pulls together the team. The days of when someone would be wasteful are long gone. Being Green is an Esprit de Corps that unifies the team. The Google Data Center Team.

Definition of esprit de corps

: the common spirit existing in the members of a group and inspiring enthusiasm, devotion, and strong regard for the honor of the group

Getting an organization as large as Google’s data center group to work together for a common goal is a challenge if not impossible goal when you have a typical enterprise organization with multiple fiefdoms competing for their own self interests.

Google’s clear goal has results that the team can be proud of.

Our efforts have yielded promising results: Today, on average, a Google data center is twice as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center. And compared with five years ago, we now deliver around seven times as much computing power with the same amount of electrical power. 

Without a great esprit de corps Google’s results would be no different than many other enterprises who are noticeably silent.

Washington Post completes the 3rd news obituary for Gary Starkweather

On the afternoon of Dec 26th I heard from Gary Starkweather’s wife Joyce that Gary had left us. She asked if I could share the news with Microsoft friends as I worked at the company when Gary was there and I was the one who got him to leave Apple for Microsoft. Given the holidays I knew that most would not be reading e-mail. After a few days I reached out through LinkedIn to a few in Microsoft who were at the company when Gary joined in 1997.

There was one post on LinkedIn my Michael Shamiyeh on Gary’s passing away. Otherwise there was no news. On Jan 2nd I started thinking about how to write about Gary’s life, and that is when I realized I had known Gary for 31 years. Searching for what to write I went back through what has been written on Gary. The Dealer’s of Lightning book on Xerox PARC has a whole chapter (#9) on Gary called “The Refuge.” Talking to Joyce Starkweather was helpful to review Gary’s life and it was nice to hear how she is doing and his family. Joyce gave me background on Gary’s discussion with Michael Shamiyeh and she pointed out how much time Gary had worked with Mike Sinclair. I told Joyce I would reach out to Michael and Mike and both have been helpful to capture Gary’s ideas he shared.

Gary’s service was going to be on Jan 8 and there was still no other news on Gary’s passing in any news sites. So I posted my tribute on this website on Jan 6 which was out there for a while with a few hundred visits and then I posted my tribute on news.ycombinator site and within days there were over 5,000 views. Which is nice but not enough.

Thanks to Michael Shamiyeh’s efforts to get the news out the WSJ and NYTimes were interested in writing obituaries and I was able to chat with both the writers to review Gary’s life and provide a plain English explanation of how a laser printer works. Both writers did an excellent job of summarizing Gary’s life and contribution.

And yesterday, Jan 16th the Washington Post put their obituary up on the web.

Gary Starkweather, inventor of the laser printer, dies at 81

By Matt Schudel Jan. 16, 2020 at 3:40 p.m. PST

Gary Starkweather, who defied his corporate boss to invent the laser printer, a revolutionary development that made it possible to print images and text directly from computer terminals in homes and offices, died Dec. 26 at a hospital in Orlando. He was 81.

Three weeks ago Gary left this earth and now there are memorials of Gary on the NYTimes, WSJ, and Washington Post. Oh and my blog post and Michael’s LInkedIn post.

But this is just the beginning of memorializing Gary’s work as Joyce has boxes of Gary’s work including his original log books from inventing the laser printer. People would always ask Gary to tell the story of inventing of the laser printer.